True, one week, and one result, does not signal a complete turnaround. But there’s little doubt that the Nottingham football team is newly energized with 1995 graduate Nick Patterson at the coaching helm.
On a warm opening weekend of high school football in Syracuse, the Bulldogs’ 27-9 victory over Rome Free Academy provided a major highlight. Of the five city teams, only Nottingham and Henninger, who routed Auburn 54-14 on Saturday at Sunnycrest Field, would prevail.
Otherwise, Corcoran took a narrow 29-28 defeat to Utica Proctor in Tyrone Fisher’s coaching debut, Fowler fell to Jamesville-DeWitt 41-6 and Institute of Technology Central lost to Bishop Ludden 46-12.
Patterson, who had coached for two seasons at Tully, returned to his alma mater this year with a clear intention of returning Nottingham to the top ranks in a tough Class AA-1 division.
Beating RFA, a program with a long and established winning tradition, was quite a way to start. The game was scoreless until the second quarter, when Marty Clanton threw a pair of 10-yard touchdown passes – one to Derrick Gore, the other to Tyquon Hightower.
Leading 14-7 at the half, the Bulldogs cranked up its defense, keeping RFA off the board the rest of the way except for a safety. Meanwhile, Gore ran 19 yards for a second TD and, in the fourth quarter, clinched matters by catching a 71-yard scoring pass from Clanton.
And Nottingham has a great chance to start 2-0. It hosts Baldwinsville this Friday, the two-time defending AA champion Bees reeling from a 27-0 defeat to CBA.
Henninger missed the AA playoffs in 2010, a rare occurrence that did not sit well with coach David Kline and his returning players. Against Auburn, the Black Knights began the road back to the post-season.
Totally dominating the first half, Henninger amassed a 39-0 lead. It began with Darrel West running 23 yards for one score and Reggie Robinson sprinting 60 yards for another.
A 26-point second quarter followed, one where West added two more TD’s, on runs of 55 and 10 yards, and Robinson returned to the end zone on a seven-yard sprint. In between, Shakim Clark contributed a 30-yard scoring run.
Robinson, all told, had 143 yards on just five carries, one of them a 70-yard TD run in the third quarter. West also carried the ball five times, amassing 123 yards. The Black Knights meet Union-Endicott Friday night in the Kickoff Classic at the Carrier Dome.
Under Fisher’s leadership, Corcoran nearly upended Class AA-2 division favorite Proctor, overcoming a 14-7 deficit in the second quarter to tie it, 21-21, by halftime.
Returning quarterback Shakim Buckmon threw a pair of TD passes, one to Devon Brown (10 yards) and the other to Emmanuel Rowser (19 yards), while Shaquille Breland took off on a 68-yard scoring run.
When Buckmon hit Johnnie Robinson on a 21-yard scoring pass in the third quarter, Corcoran led 28-21, and kept that margin until late in the final period.
It was Proctor’s Jordan Treen that decided matters. First, Treen, who already had thrown for one TD and run for another, hit Chris Simmons in the end zone from 15 yards out with 1:12 left in regulation.
Then, instead of tying it with an extra point, the Raiders went for two, and Treen, on an option run, fought past Corcoran defenders just past the goal line to give Proctor the lead.
The Cougars could not respond, and now Fisher and his team looked ahead to Friday’s trip to West Genesee, another prime AA-2 contender that ripped Oswego 66-8 in its season opener.
Not far from there, at Clary Middle School, ITC coach John Cosgrove met up with Bishop Ludden, the team he once coached and led to the 2007 state Class C championship. It did not turn out in the Eagles’ favor.
Nick Waldron got ITC on the board with a 59-yard TD run in the second quarter, but those were the team’s only points of the first half as it trailed, 21-6, at the break.
Chris Myers hit on his own big scoring run, from 58 yards out, in the third period, but Ludden proved too much. The Gaelic Knights’ Mike Works had 16 carries for 132 yards and three touchdowns. ITC stays at home this Friday to face Hannibal.
Fowler, though moved from the Class AA ranks to Class A, still has plenty of work to do, as the loss to J-D showed.
By the time London Odister scored on an eight-yard run in the third quarter, the Red Rams already owned a 41-0 lead. Eric Thomson was the main reason, throwing a TD pass to Josiah Williams and also scoring three times on short runs.
The Falcons take on Watertown Sunday night at 6:30 in the last game of the Kickoff Classic at the Dome. The Cyclones also played in the Dome for its season opener, beating Ravena 36-14.
