About the only way the Fayetteville-Manlius football team could top its 42-point, second-half comeback at Liverpool on Sept. 27 was to put even more points on the board, which it did in Friday night’s game at Rome Free Academy – in less than two quarters.
In fact, by the time the state Class AA no. 11-ranked Hornets reached halftime at RFA Stadium, it had flattened the Black Knights with 56 points, rendering the rest of the game a mere formality as it eventually won by a score of 63-19.
As that was going on, state no. 2-ranked Christian Brothers Academy got “only” 42 points in the first half of its game at Central Square, but that included three long touchdowns from Deshawn Salter as the Brothers went on to breeze past the Red Hawks 55-6.
Clearly, F-M still had momentum and energy from the big rally at Liverpool, where it trailed 24-7 before its late scoring blitz produced a 49-37 victory. Counting that and the first half at RFA, the Hornets produced an astonishing 98 points in those four quarters.
The rout of the Black Knights commenced with Jake Wittig throwing a 48-yard touchdown pass to Luke Krizman. After RFA tied it, 7-7, the Hornets went in front for good with fullback Chris Bortel’s three-yard TD run.
But the real rout started when F-M recovered an onside kick at the Black Knights’ 44 after Bortel’s score and, on the very next play, Wittig threw deep to the end zone and found Jack Wilson, extending the Hornets’ lead to 21-7.
Two more Wittig scoring passes would follow, as he went 17 yards to Luke Krizman early in the second quarter, and then suppiled another huge blow when, from his own five, he threw deep and found WIlson for a 95-yard scoring play, the team’s longest play of the season.
Wittig’s 70-yard strike to Krizman led to his own one-yard scoring sneak. Paddy Quinlan joined the fun with a 23-yard TD run and, just before the half, F-M notched an eighth touchdown when Wittig found Quinlan from 10 yards out and then made his eighth consecutive extra point.
Following three weeks of tense games against West Genesee, Baldwinsville and Liverpool not decided until the final minutes, F-M was finally able to rest its starters late in this game – something that CBA did for the entire second half after putting Central Square away in a 42-0 first-half blitz.
Salter set the tone, catching a short pass from J.R. Zazzara and turning it into a 57-yard touchdown play early in the first quarter. Minutes later, Zazzara threw his second scoring pass, 33 yards to Aaron Donalson, and Salter made it 21-0 by the end of the period by sprinting 44 yards to his second TD.
During the second quarter, the Brothers did not score an offensive point – and still managed to double its lead, starting with Andre Dowdell returning a punt 63 yards for a TD.
CBA’s defense produced a touchdown when Gavin Collins picked off a Red Hawks pass deep in its own territory and returned it 22 yards for six points. Then Salter provided one more highlight when he took another Central Square punt near midfield and brought it back 52 yards for his third TD.
With the starters on the bench, the Brothers added two more touchdowns in the second half, both of them scored by Josh Brown on runs of 10 and 16 yards.
And this leads CBA to next Saturday’s Class AA-1 division first-place showdown with Henninger (4-1, 4-0 league) at 1 p.m. at Sunnycrest Field. The Black Knights have won three in a row and are coming off a 34-6 romp over Cicero-North Syracuse.
F-M, meanwhile, heads back home for its last two games of the regular season, starting next Friday when 0-4 Utica Proctor pays a visit for a 7 p.m. kickoff.
