Two games, and two losses on the road by lopsided margins to General Brown and Thousand Islands, had the Jordan-Elbridge football team in danger of seeing its season slip out of control before its new-look lineup could get settled.
Just in time, though, the Eagles did pull together and, in last Friday’s home opener against Tully, staged a second-half comeback that yielded the team’s first win of the season as it topped the Black Knights 28-21.
Tully, who returned to Class C after a successful stint last fall in the National Football Foundation division, arrived at J-E with a 1-1 record after beating Sherburne-Earlville and falling to Canastota in its first two games.
This wasn’t a league contest, but J-E still felt urgency, and signaled its intentions on the third play from scrimmage against the Black Knights when Dale Wagner took a handoff at his own 13-yard line and took off, not getting caught in an 87-yard jaunt to the other end zone.
For a while, that 6-0 lead held, but Tully marched late in the first quarter and converted on Jake Edinger’s five-yard run, with the extra point creating a 7-6 Black Knights lead. Early in the second period, Luke Swan scored on a 20-yard reception, and the Eagles found itself trailing, 14-6, where it remained until halftime.
It was up to J-E’s defense to turn things around – which it did in the third quarter. Nate Melfi’s interception at midfield set up a short drive that Wagner finished off with a five-yard TD run, and Chris Ryan followed with another interception that led to Dominic Walborn’s scoring pass to Melfi, aided by a tip from Ryan.
All of this gave the Eagles a 20-14 lead, which it added to when Wagner returned to net his third TD on a 15-yard run with less than nine minutes left and also run in for two points. That proved important when Tully found the end zone with less than 90 seconds, cutting the margin in half, but J-E held on from there.
Unlike J-E, West Genesee could not break its skid, falling to Corcoran 28-14 in its Class AA-1 division opener at Mike Messere Field.
Like the Wildcats, the Cougars had lost its first two games of the season, to Liverpool and Cicero-North Syracuse, and were bent on turning it around – as it showed by having Kameron Robinson return the opening kickoff for a touchdown and Jaquail Everson follow with a two-point run.
Down 8-0 before the game was 20 seconds old, WG did answer with a scoring drive of its own that Liam Barry capped by finding Marcus Hudgins in the end zone. The ensuing two-point conversion tied it, 8-8, but the Wildcats would never take the lead.
Corcoran netted the only points of the second quarter on Kenneth Williams’ 13-yard run. Then it added to that 14-8 halftime margin with two crucial TD’s in the third period, both of them on runs by Devonte Flagg, including a 33-yarder.
Though the Wildcats’ Dan Purcell scored from six yards out in the final quarter, WG fell to 0-3, but it would get a chance to end that skid this Friday on the road against an 0-3 Rome Free Academy side that surrendered 62 points in a loss to Fayetteville-Manlius.
High scores were also the story for Bishop Ludden in last Friday’s visit to Cato-Meridian, where the Gaelic Knights needed every bit of its firepower to rally late and edge the Blue Devils 40-34 to improve to 2-1 on the season.
During the first half, Ludden quarterback Sh’ikem Lee twice threw scoring passes to Joe Connor, covering 45 and 14 yards. Yet that didn’t keep up with what Justin Donnelly was doing to the Gaelic Knights defense as the Cato runner found the end zone on dashes of 12, 46 and 32 yards, in that order.
Already trailing 22-14 at halftime, Ludden got into further trouble when Donnelly scored for the fourth time on a 57-yard run early in the third quarter. But Donnelly wouldn’t score again, and his containment allowed the Gaelic Knights time to pick the Blue Devils’ defenses apart.
Lee did so with a pair of third-period scoring drives, one that he finished off with a 14-yard run and another ended by Kevin Burkhart scoring from six yards out. Neither conversion worked, so Ludden trailed 28-26 with one quarter left.
Patiently, the Gaelic Knights drove down the field and took the lead with Lee’s three-yard plunge. Even after Harry Sherman found the end zone, Ludden responded with a drive capped by Burkhart’s second TD, from six yards out, along with a Lee two-point run.
Cato could not match it, and Ludden now found itself trailing only Onondaga (3-0) in the Class D North/West division. And the Tigers visit the Gaelic Knights this Friday at 7p.m. in a first-place showdown.
