It took a bit of defensive playmaking and a bit of trickery for the Cazenovia football team to bring itself to life during Saturday’s season opener against Mexico at Fulton High School’s turf field.
Dan Kent and Matt Regan, senior captains back from last year’s Section III Class B title run, authored those big plays, and the rest of the Lakers took it from there, defeating the Tigers 28-7.
Though it turned into a more lopsided score than their 2016 season opener at the Carrier Dome, Cazenovia took a while to get comfortable against Mexico, who is playing its home games at Fulton this fall while its turf gets replaced.
The Lakers and Tigers played through a scoreless first quarter and were still that way when, in the second period, Kent intervened, jumping on a Mexico swing pass and returning it 55 yards for a touchdown.
Still, Cazenovia’s offense had not registered a point until just before halftime. Facing a third-down-and-long, Regan engineered a flea-flicker pass to Drew Johnson that set up Regan’s own two-yard scoring run.
Early in the third quarter, the Tigers threatened to make it interesting, going 62 yards on a scoring drive with nothing but running plays, the last of them Reed Fravor’s five-yard TD dash.
But the Lakers didn’t allow anything more and, early in the final period, restored the margin to 20-7 on Joey Gates’ five-yard scoring run Not done making an impact, Cazenovia’s defense forced a safety to extend the lead to 22-7, with Regan throwing a 20-yard scoring pass to Matt McLaughlin with 6:51 left to wrap up the win.
Cazenovia now prepares for its second annual night game at Buckley-Volo Field as it hosts Vernon-Verona-Sherrill next Friday at 7 p.m. The Red Devils also won its season opener, coming from behind to beat Utica-Notre Dame.
