Less than 20 seconds had passed, and the Skaneateles football team found itself playing from behind in Friday night’s game against Institute of Technology Central.
It didn’t stay that way for long, though, and the Lakers, again propelled by a diverse and exciting offense, easily earned a 41-14 victory over the Eagles at Clary Middle School.
Skaneateles, no. 12 in the latest state Class C rankings, is now 5-0 on the season, and can win the outright Class C West division regular-season title for the second year in a row if it can knock off Tully next Friday night at Arthur Hyatt Stadium.
If the Lakers were looking ahead to Tully, those plans got put on ice the moment ITC’s Keenan Scott scooped up the opening kickoff and, 80 yards later, found himself in the end zone.
That, plus Tial Thang’s extra point, left Skanaeatles behind 7-0. All it did, though, was make the Lakers angry.
What followed was 35 unanswered points for the rest of the half. Connor Herr capped off the first scoring drive with a five-yard touchdown pass to Steven Bright, and Max Weiss put Skaneateles ahead for good when he scored on an eight-yard run.
Near the end of the period, Weiss struck in a bigger way, taking a short pass from Herr at midfield and weaving his way through the Eagles’ defense before finding the end zone from 52 yards out.
Not letting up, Skaneateles would drive twice more in the second quarter. Weiss, who ran for 142 yards on 13 carries (an average of nearly 11 yards per carry), scored for the third time on a one-yard plunge, and Herr threw his third TD pass, 45 yards to Jake Cooney.
While Herr did not quite match the six TD passes he threw against Marcellus eight days earlier, he still amassed 313 yards through the air, completing 19 of 28 passes and four scores, the last of them a 19-yard strike to Weiss in the fourth quarter. Cooney, again, was the main benefactor, with 130 yards on eight receptions.
And this leads to Tully, who is 4-1 and took its only loss, 28-20, to Bishop Ludden on Sept. 21. The Black Knights are coming off a 50-20 romp over Hannibal.
