SOUTH DEERFIELD – The “Red Hawk Express” is back and in full effect.
Frontier Regional School racked up 363 rushing yards and five touchdowns en route to a 38-18 domination of Drury High School in an independent football game Friday night.
“We’ve got a lot of guys who can do a lot back there,” Frontier head coach Don Gordon said of his “three-headed monster” backfield tandem of Aaron Landry (12 carries, 192 yards), Steven Worthley (9 carries, 88 yards) and Seth Gewanter (14 carries, 69 yards). “Once we get some of the fundamentals figured out, this team may be a little bit scary.”
It certainly was for the Blue Devils, who seemed to have no answer for the Red Hawk running attack, at least in the early going. It took Frontier all of nine plays and 1:49 to march 63 yards before Gewanter blasted in from the one for the first of his three touchdowns. Worthley caught the PAT conversion pass from quarterback Myles Freeman to make the score 8-0.
The Red Hawks would score again on the next series when Landry took a hand-off and tore up the left sideline for a 92-yard touchdown run. Gewanter took in the two-point conversion to make it 16-0.
If this were a boxing match, they might have stopped it right there, but Drury would answer on the next series when quarterback Obilio Rodriguez hit senior wideout Hayden Bird for a 64-yard touchdown pass. Bird was Rodriguez favorite target of the night, with four receptions which accounted for 116 of the Blue Devils’ 121 passing yards.
A fumbled snap on the two-point conversion kept the score 16-6. Gewanter would score on a 16-yard touchdown run, followed by a failed two-point conversion to make the score 22-6 Red Hawks at the end of one quarter.
As impressive as the Frontier ground game was, there is clearly still some room for improvement in other facets of the Red Hawk game. Frontier turned the ball over 4 times on fumbles, one of which led to 85-yard touchdown recovery by Blue Devil defensive back Thaylen Harrison in the second quarter to make the score 22-12.
Worthley would round out the first half scoring late in the second quarter with an 18-yard touchdown run, followed by a Gewanter PAT run to make the score 30-12 heading into the break. After a scoreless third, Gewanter scored for the third time on a ten-yard touchdown run in the fourth to make the score 36-12. After spending most of the game employing a pretty ineffective ground game, Drury went to the air in the fourth and scored late in the fourth when Rodriguez hit Harrison with a one-yard touchdown pass set up by two long receptions by Bird for 20 and 30 yards on the previous two plays.