It is difficult to easily measure the amount of catharsis felt by Solvay football players, coaches and fans as the clock ran out Friday night and the Bearcats had defeated Marcellus 42-35.
Gone was a playoff drought that had stretched for more than a decade. Also gone was a streak of 12 consecutive defeats to the Mustangs that dated back to 2008, the Tom Anthony Silver Cup finally back in Solvay’s hands.
“It’s crazy, it’s mayhem, but we deserved it,” said quarterback Brock Bagozzi, whose four touchdown passes helped the Bearcats withstand numerous Marcellus comebacks.
“This means a lot to our community,” said head coach Dan Salisbury. “It was a great game and they (Marcellus) played us tough, but our kids hung in there.”
Maybe it only figured that, after all the seasons spent in relative purgatory, Solvay, in order to win this battle between two undefeated (4-0) teams atop the Class B West division, would have to endure a long and stressful battle with Marcellus that stretched more than three hours and included a rash of penalties on both sides.
The state Class B no. 15-ranked Bearcats temporarily silenced the state no. 10-ranked Mustangs and its large Homecoming crowd by scoring twice in the first three minutes to grab a 14-0 lead.
A 60-yard pass from Bagozzi to Russ Tarbell setting up a two-yard scoring run by Jaimen Bliss, followed by a Marcellus punt that Elijah Wright blocked and Tyriq Block picked up and took to the end zone.
Marcellus absorbed this and, with its own vaunted ground game, put together two scoring drives of its own to tie it, 14-14, by the middle of the second quarter, and would pull back even again at 21-21 late in the half after Blaine Franklin’s two-yard scoring dash got the Bearcats back in front.
Perhaps the game’s most important play came after that third Mustangs touchdown, scored by Sean Tierney on a three-yard run with less than a minute left in the half.
On the very next play from scrimmage, Bagozzi, from his own 45, threw deep down the right sideline and found a streaking Cullen Scott, the 55-yard TD putting Solvay in front for good.
The Bearcats’ 28-21 halftime edge didn’t feel secure, given the way that Marcellus was moving the ball on the ground and the fact that Solvay would not have Bliss for the rest of the game due to injury.
Bagozzi was still out there, though, and midway through the third quarter he again burned the Mustangs deep, this time with a 48-yard TD pass to Scott over the middle, doubling Solvay’s margin to 35-21.
Tierney’s seven-yard scoring pass to Jared Sammon on fourth-and-goal brought the Mustangs back within seven, but early in the fourth quarter Bagozzi again threw deep over the middle, finding Tarbell for a TD that covered 54 yards early in the fourth quarter.
Trailing 42-28, the Mustangs kept itself alive when Nick Kermes intercepted Bagozzi, setting up a short five that Kermes finished off from one yard out with 7:30 to play.
After a defensive stop, Marcellus got the ball at its own 20 and, again churning up yards on the ground, drove to Solvay’s 25. But after an incomplete pass to the end zone, the Mustangs halted and, on fourth-and-11, Kermes caught a Tierney pass near the goal line, but was out of bounds.
Able to run out the clock, the Bearcats claimed its fifth consecutive win, and all it needs now is to defeat Westhill next Friday at Al Merola Field to lock up the B West regular-season title.
