TURNERS FALLS — The Frontier Regional School football team went from impressive to downright scary Saturday.
The Red Hawks exploded for nine touchdowns, two on special teams, to rout the Franklin County Technical School Eagles, 66-28, Saturday afternoon in what was the first Intercounty League meeting ever between the two teams.
It was as impressive an offensive performance as we’ve seen in the league this season on both sides of the ball. Frontier generated a total of 489 yards of offense, 429 on the ground, an especially impressive stat considering that the Red Hawks only ran the ball 28 times, four times in a first quarter which saw them generate what wound up being an insurmountable 22-6 lead.
The rushing performance gave the Red Hawks an almost unheard of 1,096 rushing yards in three games, mostly behind the powerful north-south running of Seth Gewanter (8 carries, 148 yards), Aaron Landry (6 carries, 131 yards), and Steven Worthley (6 carries, 124 yards). The three-headed backfield monster accounted for eight of the team’s nine touchdowns Saturday, with Worthley and Landry each scoring a TD on a long kick return.
“I think our special-teams play has improved a lot since last year, for sure,” Landry said. “We’ve been working hard on it.”
Franklin Tech also had a strong offensive outing, generating four touchdowns and 377 total yards, 351 on the ground, largely from the legs of senior back Dylan Mailloux (43 carries, 247 yards), junior Spencer Telega (7 carries, 63 yards), and senior Tyler Sakowicz (9 carries, 41 yards).
That type of performance would have been good enough to win on almost any other day, but not against the “juggernaut from South County,” which set the tone on the game’s opening play. That’s when Worthley took the opening kickoff and ran it straight down the center of the field for an 88-yard touchdown. The junior speedster finished what he started, converting the two-point-conversion run to give Frontier an 8-0 lead it would come nowhere close to relinquishing.
Tech came back on the next series, marching 70 yards on 13 plays before quarterback Seth Aldrich connected with Calleb Milton on a 14-yard touchdown pass. Frontier managed to stop Mailloux on the two-point-conversion run to keep the score 8-6.
That was the last time the Eagles saw the end zone until the third quarter. By that time, it was all Red Hawks, who extended the lead to 14-6 on their first series with a Worthley 60-yard touchdown run. Tech stopped the two-point-conversion run to keep the score 14-6. Landry took an Eagle punt back 69 yards for a touchdown on the next series, with a Joe Morawski PAT run making the score 22-6.
Frontier scored again on its next series, when Landry took it to the house from 52 yards out on what was only the Red Hawks’ fourth play from scrimmage in the half. Worthley’s PAT run made it 28-6. If high school football had a “mercy” rule, the game might have been stopped right there, but Frontier was far from finished. Landry scored again on the next series on a 25-yard run. The two-point-conversion pass fell incomplete, keeping the score 34-6.
Frontier quarterback Myles Freeman got into the act on the next offensive play, throwing his only pass of the day, a 60-yard bomb down the right sideline to a streaking Landry, who legged it into the end zone for the touchdown. Gewanter followed with the two-point-conversion run to make it 42-6.
Frontier got the ball back one more time late in the second quarter when Freeman intercepted a first-down pass by Aldrich. Four plays later, Landry was in the end zone again on a 24-yard run. A PAT-conversion pass from Freeman to Gewanter made the score 50-6 headed into halftime.
“They are very good,” Franklin Tech Coach Joe Gamage said. “They are physical, they are well disciplined. Coming in, we knew it would be tough, because they are the defending league champs and they are there for a reason.”
Another team might have folded up the tent at that point, but not Franklin Tech, which opened the third with its best drive of the game, 76 yards on eight plays, which ended with a 9-yard Mailloux touchdown run and a Telega PAT run to make it 50-14. It was the start of a strong second half by Mailloux, who generated 174 of his game-high 247 rushing yards after a first half in which he was pretty successfully contained by Frontier’s strong defense line.
Red Hawk fans got a look at the future early in the fourth when freshman running back Corbin Blight (3 carries, 11 yards) converted on a 5-yard touchdown run. Landry took in the two-point conversion to make it 58-14. Mailloux answered on Tech’s very next plan with a 65-yard touchdown run, but Frontier managed to stop Aldrich’s two-point conversion attempt to keep the score 58-20.
Frontier scored again on its next play, when Gewanter broke a couple of tackles and tore down the middle of the field for a 70-yard touchdown. Freeman took in the two-point-conversion to make at 66-20, effectively ending the day for the Red Hawks’ starting unit. A Mailloux 3-yard touchdown pass and a Aldrich conversion pass to sophomore Jared Bergmann rounded out the scoring, creating the 66-28 final.
Frontier Coach Don Gordon said the strong special teams play was not a surprise to him.
“We work a lot on that in practice,” Gordon said. “That’s the kind of hidden yardage that ends up being important.”
Franklin Tech travels to Athol Friday night.
Frontier welcomes Greenfield to town for Booster Day Saturday afternoon.