Now the preliminaries for the West Genesee football team are over, and the big tests of the 2011 season loom dead ahead.
At least the Wildcats go there as Section III Class AA’s lone unbeaten side, its offense putting on another exciting showcase in Friday night’s 54-19 victory over Auburn at Holland Stadium.
Thus, all is set for this Friday’s first-place showdown in the AA-2 division between WG and Fayetteville-Manlius at Wildcat Stadium in Camillus, Kickoff is at 6 p.m. between two long-time rivals that are putting up astonishing offensive numbers.
In getting to 3-0, WG has scored 161 points. But even that pales next to F-M’s total of 181 points, even though the Hornets are 2-1 because it lost a wild 62-50 affair to Corning at the Carrier Dome to open the season. Routs over Utica Proctor (56-21) and Oswego (75-6) have followed.
As F-M was dismantling Oswego, the Wildcats were making its trek to Auburn and merely producing 40 points in the first half, much of them from Naesean Howard, who recorded four touchdowns by himself.
The first quarter featured Howard finishing off scoring drives with TD runs of five and 10 yards. In between, Matt Naton found Ted Glesener in the end zone from 15 yards out, and WG led 20-0 after one period.
Naton went much deeper early in the second quarter, connecting with Sean Howard on a 63-yard scoring pass. Then Naesean Howard went to work again, finding the end zone on runs of five and 25 yards.
Overall, Naesean had 137 yards on the ground. It helped that WG worked with short fields, as the defense caused a pair of interceptions, and Sean Howard’s 39-yard punt return set up another score.
At one point, WG led 54-6 late in the third quarter. Sean Howard found the end zone on an 11-yard run, and even Naton joined in the ground game as he scored on a 20-yard run.
All of the Wildcats’ starters went to the bench in the fourth quarter, and Auburn scored a pair of TD’s to make it a bit closer.
But already WG was thinking about F-M. No doubt, the defense faces a supreme challenge against an explosive Hornets offense anchored by quarterback Wolfgang Shafer, who can throw to Austin Perez and Sawyer Dew, or hand off to backs Andrew Fletcher, Ryan Greer and Sean Bright.
