For the third year in a row, Cazenovia High School brought portable lights to Buckley-Volo Field, bringing the excitement of Friday-night football to Lakers country.
The one difference in 2018 is that Cazenovia is going to do this twice, and the second of these games will mean plenty.
As a result of Friday’s 28-13 victory over Camden, the Lakers will take a 3-0 record into next Friday’s clash with 3-0 Vernon-Verona-Sherrill, the winner to move to the top of the Class B East division standings.
Camden entered this game 0-2, but had pushed Oneida the week before in a 21-13 loss, and were determined to make things stressful for the Lakers, too, keeping the game scoreless in the first quarter.
But in the second period Cazenovia took control with a pair of scoring drives. Each of them was finished off by quarterback Drew Johnson, who scored on runs of four and 10 yards.
A steady Cazenovia attack produced 368 total yards and would build a 28-0 margin by the fourth quarter, Johnson scoring a third time on a four-yard run and Ryan Romagnoli going 26 yards for a TD.
Aside from his team-high 88 yards on the ground, Johnson completed seven of 12 passes for 123 yards. Romagnoli added 83 yards on 12 carries as Ty Freyer gained 62 yards on seven carries.
The Lakers kept the Blue Devils off the board until the fourth quarter, forcing a trio of turnovers as Freyer and Tony Heaney earned interceptions and Keegan Bailey added a fumble recovery. Two of Dan Hammond’s four tackles were for losses as Ian Fostvelt added three tackles.
Chittenango has permanent lights at its home field, and were there again on Friday night, recovering from a defeat to New Hartford the week before by holding off Central Valley Academy 15-14 to improve its record to 2-1.
Having given Cazenovia a decent battle in its previous outing, the Thunder did not get rattled by the Bears’ first-quarter scoring drive that Nate Smith finished off with a 20-yard touchdown run, Brian Lamaitis running in for two points.
Neither side scored the rest of the half, and CVA broke through in the third quarter on Riley Brewer’s five-yard TD run, only to have the Bears stop a tying two-point attempt.
Offering a quick answer, Chittenango drove down to the Thunder’s one-yard line and Francis Cerio scored from there. More importantly, the Bears got the extra point and extended its lead to 15-6.
Thus, when Braden Hoffman scored from five yards out with 9:10 left and Brewer added the two-point run, Chittenango still led by one, and it proceeded to burn more than eight minutes of clock on its next possession.
CVA did make a defensive stop at its own 22 with less than a minute left, but could not do much with its final possession.
Smith finished with 91 yards on nine carries, with Cerio carrying it 20 times for 77 yards. Alex Whitcomb and Hunter White each had four tackles to pace Chittenango’s defense.
A crucial game awaits the Bears next week as it visits 3-0 Oneida. So counting this game along with Cazenovia against VVS, the four top teams in B East all meet each other, after which much more will be known about where all these teams stand.
