Three weeks, three home games for the Chittenango football team – and three victories on the ledger.
In short, the Bears are back as a Class B West division and Section III title contender, further proving that point by jumping all over Marcellus Friday night and cruising to a 28-18 victory over the Mustangs.
With that 3-0 mark, Chittenango shares the top spot in B West with defending sectional champion Homer. And the Bears make a trip to Homer to face the Trojans next Friday with first place on the line.
If nothing else, Chittenango heads there quite confident in what its defense can do. Twice in the first half against Marcellus, a mistake by the visitors turned into six points on the other end.
Already, the Bears owned a 6-0 lead, thanks to Justin Gondeck’s 41-yard scoring pass to tight end Hunter Hendrix, when the Mustangs fumbled the ball on its own 24. Duncan Smith scooped it up and returned it to the end zone, doubling Chittenango’s lead to 12-0.
Before Marcellus could settle down, it fumbled again attempting a trick play in its own territory early in the second period, and again Chittenango got a touchdown, this one by Akira Gatewood from 40 yards out.
As if that wasn’t enough, Gatewood also caught a two-point pass from Gondeck, who found Hendrix for a second TD connection from 21 yards out and then threw to Hendrix for two points, all of which created a 28-6 halftime margin.
Marcellus would start taking care of the ball during the second half, engineering a pair of scoring drives. Yet it wasn’t enough to catch up, the Bears leaning plenty on Hendrix, who had 10 tackles on defense to go with five catches for 116 yards and those two scores.
A night after Chittenango stopped Marcellus, Cazenovia, no. 2 in the first state Class B rankings of the season, visited South Jefferson and easily prevailed by a 30-0 margin to improve to 3-0.
T.J. Connellan got things rolling for the Lakers, scoring on a 32-yard run in the first quarter. Connellan’s second TD, on a 22-yard run, made it 14-0 before the period ended.
Cazenovia doubled that margin in the second quarter to take a 28-0 lead to halftime. Again, Connellan was a big part of it, scoring for a third time on a 35-yard pass from Jake Shaffner before the Lakers’ quarterback went one yard for his own TD later in the period.
From there, the only suspense was whether the Lakers would get its second shutout in three weeks. It did, even tacking on a third-quarter safety as, in 12 total quarters this season, Cazenovia has not surrendered a point in 11 of them.
Cazenovia will welcome Oneida to Buckley-Volo Field this Saturday at 1:30. The Indians (2-1) started out with a 26-19 loss to rival Vernon-Verona-Sherrill, but has recovered to win its next two games over South Jefferson (14-6) Central Valley Academy (35-22).
