It may have taken a game and a half for its offense to find its full capability, but the East Syracuse Minoa football team did not suffer for it.
A tough Spartans defense has limited its opponents to 14 points in two weeks, continuing to excel Friday night as ESM handled Fulton 34-6 at Spartan Stadium.
Other than a first-quarter scoring drive, the Red Raiders could not move the ball with any consistency, and by the end of that period ESM led for good thanks to Joe Copp’s 10-yard touchdown run and Dan Garris running it in for two points.
That was just the warm-up act for Garris, who engineered another scoring drive that he capped with a one-yard TD sneak. The Spartans went to halftime enjoying a 14-6 lead.
It was only in the second half that the big plays occurred. From midfield, Garris found Alex Recor for a 49-yard scoring pass and, minutes later, Garris scrambled 15 yards for his second running TD of the night.
To cap it off, Garris hit Recor again in the fourth quarter for six points, the TD covering 60 yards as Recor accumulated 154 receiving yards on just four catches. Garris ran for 65 yards, just behind Copp’s team-high 78 yards on the ground.
While ESM improved to 2-0, Jamesville-DeWitt met the same Honeoye Falls-Lima team the Spartans defeated seven days earlier in the Carrier Dome, and the Red Rams fell to the Cougars 20-12.
All of the points were scored in the first half, J-D twice finding the end zone but HF-L moving out in front with a pair of second-quarter TD passes by Turner Wilson – one to Derek Childs, the other to Mitch Slymon.
While the Rams’ defense had a terrific second half, it could not eat into the Cougars’ margin and J-D fell to 0-2. It won’t get easier as three-time defending Section III Class A champion Whitesboro visits next Saturday at 2 p.m., a night after ESM visits Vestal.
