Only once in the month of September would the Cazenovia football team go on the road, and it proved successful.
The Lakers visited Central Valley Academy Friday night, debuted a new part of its uniform and fought its way to a 21-7 victory over the Thunder to improve its record to 2-0.
For a long time, when Cazenovia played a road game, its white jerseys were accompanied by white pants. On this night, though, the Lakers donned blue pants, but while the look was a bit different, the team wasn’t.
Having shown his fine all-around ability in the Lakers’ season-opening romp over Mexico six days earlier, Ryan Romagnoli struck again here, his four-yard touchdown run the only points of the first quarter.
CVA absorbed this and, early in the second period, put together a drive of its own, a long pass play setting up Hayden Shaver’s one-yard scoring dive and Kyle Brewer’s extra point.
So the Lakers trailed for the first time all season, but that 7-6 deficit lasted all of five minutes.
Drew Johnson’s long pass to James Pavelchak got Cazenovia into scoring position, and Romagnoli returned to score from seven yards out, Johnson adding a two-point pass to Chad Carges. For the game, Johnson was 11-for-18 for 158 yards through the air, adding 65 rushing yards on 14 carries.
Up 14-7 at halftime, the Lakers found itself unable to do much on offense during the last two periods against a determined Thunder defense, but it would prove not to matter.
Putting together its own second-half shutout, Cazenovia’s defense would make game’s biggest play, forcing a third-quarter fumble at the CVA 26 that Tony Heaney returned for a touchdown.
The Lakers held the Thunder to just 47 total yards. Shawn Szlamczynski recorded two sacks and assisted on five other tackles, while Dan Hammond had five solo tackles. Vince Borio contributed four tackles and three assists.
Now Cazenovia settles in for three straight home games, two of them under the lights starting with next Friday’s visit from Camden that kicks off at 7 p.m.
New Hartford is at Buckley-Volo Field on Sept. 29, but long before that the Spartans reshaped the Class B East division race behind Cazenovia on Friday when it took down Chittenango 43-14.
Other than a first-quarter touchdown on Francis Cerio’s eight-yard run, the Bears were contained enough in the early going, which allowed the Spartans to zoom out to a 24-8 halftime advantage.
It got further away as Blake Hobin burned Chittenango for two big plays, catching a 61-yard TD pass from Tyler Potocki and breaking his team out of its own territory with an 88-yard scoring run. Dakota Diable had a six-yard TD run for the Bears in the third quarter.
Falling to 1-1 eight days after a season-opening win over Camden, the Bears will be back home next Friday and face the same CVA side Cazenovia just beat.
