With warm affection, the West Genesee football team welcomed Oswego back into the Class AA fold in Friday night’s season opener at Wildcat Stadium.
Then the game started, and the affection quickly turned into annihilation.
Displaying just how potent it could be this fall, the Wildcats bashed the Buccaneers 66-8, earning all of its points in the first three quarters as, in particular, the Howard brothers cleaned up.
Combined, Sean Howard and Nasean Howard had six touchdowns. Sean ignited the fuse early in the first quarter, taking a short Oswego punt and returning it 45 yards down the left sideline for a touchdown.
In fact, Sean pulled off the rare trifecta of a score in all three phases of the game before halftime. He would add a 35-yard interception return for a TD late in the first quarter and catch Matt Naton’s long pass to go 70 yards for another score in the half’s waning moments.
Meanwhile, Nasean Howard began his sophomore season with three consecutive TD’s. His first was the most spectacular, as the Wildcats, pinned at its own 13, busted out of it by seeing Nasean take a handoff, find the hole and go 87 yards for six points.
Two much shorter scoring runs (of three and two yards) quickly followed, and Nasean finished with 147 yards on the ground, all by the third quarter.
Naton didn’t need to do too much hard work on this night, but he still had two TD passes – one to Sean Howard, the other eight yards to Brett Colvin. With the starters on the bench, Nick Melon, on a 17-yard run, and Dan Ginestro, on a 14-yard sprint, added two more late scores.
Everyone on the Wildcats knows that next Friday’s visit from Corcoran will provide a sterner test.
Under first-year coach Tyrone Fisher, the Cougars dropped a tight 29-28 opener to Utica Proctor when the Raiders scored on a TD and two-point conversion with 1:12 left.
