ONONDAGA COUNTY – Mired at 1-3, the West Genesee football team was in danger of seeing its season slip away, but got up just in time.
Hosting Auburn Thursday night at Mike Messere Field, the Wildcats used a potent offense to build a big lead, then withstood a furious Maroons comeback to prevail 35-30.
Auburn entered the game 3-2, but WG was motivated not just to get back to the win column, but to give head coach Joe Corley some good news as he attended to a family health matter and missed the game.
Two assistant coaches, Tim Schmidt and Jamie Casullo, ran the sidelines, but they had plenty of their own head-coaching experience, Casullo at Westhill and Schmidt at Corcoran.
WG’s offense moved the ball throughout the first half, scoring once in the first quarter and twice in the second period on Jack Wade touchdown passes of 13 yards to Alex Maione and 45 yards to Francisco Cross.
After the Maroons closed it to 21-14 in the third quarter, a big play snatched back the momentum as Cross, from his own 12-yard line, broke through Auburn defenders and went 88 yards to the other end zone, his third TD of the night.
A fourth Wade scoring pass, 19 yards to Maione, extended the Wildcats’ lead to 35-14, and every bit of that margin was needed.
Twice in the fourth quarter, Auburn put together scoring drives and added two-point conversions, but WG held on and will try to carry that over to this Friday’s game against 5-1 Rome Free Academy.
In another Thursday-night thriller, Jordan-Elbridge appeared to have pulled out its game against Port Byron/Union Springs, only to see it get away as the Eagles took a 26-24 loss to the Panthers.
Port Byron’s lone first-quarter score was spectacular, Jru WHite throwing a 20-yard pass that Dominic LaFramboise caught one-handed in the end zone despite good J-E defense.
That sparked the Panthers to a 19-6 halftime advantage, the visitors having overcome the Eagles’ initial burst as it scored in the opening period on Kuchaun Gorman’s three-yard run.
Then the Eagles sprang to life with three consecutive drives in the third quarter. Nixon Karcz scored on scrambles of 34 and 17 yards and, in between, threw an 11-yard TD pass to Dylan Czarnecko.
Yet the 24-19 advantage could not hold. Port Byron drove to J-E’s 18 midway through the fourth quarter and, from there, White found the end zone. Try as it could, the Eagles could not answer it.
Gorman finished with 132 yards on 19 carries, Karcz adding 107 yards on 21 carries. Ellis Titus led the Eagles’ defense with seven tackles, while Austin Brunelle managed five tackles.
Westhill had its own slump to break on Friday when it hosted Jamesville-DeWitt, having dropped back-to-back games to Indian River and Homer to fall to 1-3 on the season.
The Warriors did so in an emphatic manner, blanking the Red Rams 42-0 and earning half of those points in a first-quarter scoring surge.
Elijah Welch got it going when he scrambled 25 yards for a TD. Minutes later, it was 14-0 thanks to Keller O’Hern’s 24-yard scoring pass to Kam Langdon, with Welch returning before the quarter was over to get his own TD pass to Langdon.
Striking twice more in the second quarter, the Warriors had Welch throw 18 yards to Collin White for one score and Taden Chester find the end zone from two yards out.
O’Hern tacked on a 75-yard TD sprint in the fourth quarter, the longest play of his career, as Chester led a balanced ground attack with 81 yards on eight carries. Welch completed seven of nine passes for 91 yards and Jack Hayes converted all of his of his extra-point attempts.
