A large and raucous crowd is expected when the Fayetteville-Manlius football team welcomes Christian Brothers Academy next Friday night.
And the Hornets will do so coming off back-to-back wins, having gone to West Genesee’s Mike Messere Field Friday and, thanks to another scintillating effort from tailback Mitch Seabury, defeated the Wildcats 35-26.
A week earlier, Seabury had run for 341 yards and six touchdowns in an F-M win over Henninger. Now he set out to hurt the Wildcats’ defense, and did so with a first-quarter scoring run of 16 yards.
WG countered with a drive of its own that Dan Purcell finished with a six-yard scoring run that, with Brendan Hammerle’s extra point, tied it 7-7.
With 5:27 left in the half, the Wildcats seized a 13-7 lead on Liam Barry’s scoring pass to John Northrop, only to miss the conversion. F-M now provided the answer as Seabury again scored, from 18 yards out, and a successful PAT pushed the Hornets to a 14-13 lead that it kept until the break.
Most of the third quarter went scoreless, but F-M pushed its lead to 21-13, leading to a Wildcats drive that Barry capped by going to his favorite receiver, Ben Rustay, on a 20-yard scoring pass with 9:36 left.
Though plenty of time remained to get the ball back, WG went for two points and a tie, and were stopped. That proved more costly when F-M gave it Seabury again, and he took off on a 47-yard TD run barely a minute after Rustay’s score.
The extra point made it 28-19, and combined with a Hornets goal-line stand in the final period, it thwarted WG’s chances, though Barry still threw another 20-yard scoring strike to Rustay before Seabury clinched it for F-M thanks to a 62-yard scoring run with less than two minutes left.
And now F-M could look ahead to CBA, who traveled Saturday to Elmira and faced all kinds of stress from the Express, requiring a series of clutch plays in the fourth quarter to pull out a 40-33 victory.
During its 2-0 start, the state Class AA no. 8-ranked Brothers had cruised past Henninger and West Genesee. And it jumped out to a 12-0 lead on Elmira in the first quarter, with Stevie Scott’s 30-yard TD run and SirVocea Dennis scoring on a one-yard plunge after a Tim Denham interception.
What got the Express going in the second quarter was a scoring drive plus a fumble CBA kickoff that led to another touchdown, and suddenly the Brothers trailed for the first time all season, 13-12.
That deficit didn’t last, as Dennis connected with Denham on a 48-yard scoring pass. Elmira again answered, cutting CBA’s lead to 20-19, and when Dennis got intercepted, the Express had a chance to move in front – but Sean Miller’s sack on fourth down preserved the Brothers’ slim margin at halftime.
Not discouraged by this, Elmira took the second-half kickoff down the field, and Max Temple scored from 25 yards out to grab a 27-20 lead. Even when Dennis broke loose on a 59-yard TD run and tied the game 27-27, the Express roared back with a 70-yard, seven-minute drive that created a go-ahead score.
But after all of the struggles it had in the first three periods, CBA’s defense stood up once the fourth quarter started, forcing a turnover that Dennis turned into a 30-yard scoring run that, with Tyler Kellison’s extra point, pushed the Brothers back in front, 34-33.
Now Elmira was without Temple, who had 130 yards on 24 carries, but had suffered a leg injury and would not return Another CBA turnover inside its own 20 threatened that lead, but again the Brothers’ defense made a clutch fourth-down stop on the 16.
Moments later, Avion Othman took off on a 46-yard run, setting up Dennis for a 19-yard dash to the end zone with 3:21 left. One more defensive stop allowed the Brothers to hang on.
