Whatever anyone else is accomplishing in local eight-man football, they still have a ways to go in order to catch up to what Bishop Grimes is doing.
Under the lights last Friday, the Cobras hosted Oriskany and set a new program mark for points, recording 11 touchdowns in the course of a 76-28 victory to move to 4-0 on the season.
And what made this even more remarkable was that Grimes didn’t even score in the first quarter.
Oriskany got off to a perfect start, racing to a 14-0 lead, but all that seemed to do was anger the Cobras, who responded with 28 unanswered points of its own in the second period.
Once A.J. Burnett found T.J. Bradford on a 49-yard touchdown pass early in that second quarter, much more followed, with Joe Wike scoring on runs of 49 and four yards and Burnett finding Bradford again in the end zone from 14 yards out just before halftime.
Not content with a 28-14 lead at the break, Grimes unloaded with five TD’s in a decisive third quarter, with Burnett connecting four times on scoring passes, three of them to Nate Gay (including a 62-yarder) along with a 31-yard strike to Bradford.
Then the Cobras ran wild late, Matt Rogers scoring from 49 yards out and Taj Tinker adding a 72-yard TD run as Nader Elturk found the end zone from 57 yards out.
Burnett completed 11 of 15 passes for 304 yards and those six touchdowns. Wike ran for 95 yards and two scores as Gay had five catches for 142 yards and Bradford had five catches for 140 yards.
Grimes’ success was the lone bright spot in a rough weekend for area football teams, which started last Friday with Christian Brothers Academy going to Corcoran and falling to the Cougars 50-6.
Even coming off its first win of the season over Henninger on Sept. 28, the Brothers could not get much going against the Cougars, only scoring once on a second-quarter TD.
Corcoran, by that point, had a solid lead, but it didn’t take charge until the third quarter, when a 16-6 margin grew thanks to the Cougars getting 21 unanswered points. Daricus Haynes ran for 142 yards on 16 carries, with Damian Brown gaining 102 yards and scoring twice.
That same night, Jamesville-DeWitt sought its first win of the season at Carthage, but unlike CBA its main struggles came in the early stages as it lost 37-14 to the Comets, who won its fifth in a row.
All that Carthage did in the first half was build a 27-0 advantage, with Fombo Azah scoring three touchdowns including runs of 27 and 44 yards before Nick Cavellier threw a 49-yard scoring pass to Luke Piroli.
Azah ran for 149 yards on 13 carries as Cavellier completed 10 of 16 passes for 196 yards, all of which put J-D in a catch-up mode that made it go through the air often.
Adam Honis threw 57 passes for the Rams, completing 26 of them for 246 yards. Kelvin Hunyh had 11 catches for 97 yards as Honis scored twice in the second half on runs of four and eight yards, but it proved too late.
For its regular-season finale this Friday, J-D is hosting East Syracuse Minoa, a team it beat at Spartan Stadium last September, but is now trying to break out of its own four-game skid.
The Spartans lost last Saturday to New Paltz, 15-6, playing solid defense most of the way, but held to a single late touchdown.
