NORTH ADAMS — It was a party night at McCann Tech. Somebody forgot to tell the Mahar football team about it.
In the first-ever night game at McCann Tech, the Senators spoiled the party by scoring the game’s first 48 points en route to a 48-12 win. The final quarter and a half of the game was played with running time.
Senators running back Domanic Cacciolfi scored three times on touchdown runs of 3, 35 and 2 yards. He carried the ball six times for 59 yards.
Quarterback Kaleb Lemcke had a pair of touchdowns, scoring on runs of seven and 54 yards. He finished the day with 109 yards rushing on 11 carries. Lemcke outrushed the entire Hornet team, which only managed 67 yards rushing on 29 carries, and had only 79 yards in total offense.
In fact, McCann did not record a first down until the game’s final drive. It was a drive that ended with the Hornets’ first offensive touchdown of 2022.
With the win, Mahar is now 2-0, having beaten Springfield International Charter School in Week 1.
“It’s an excellent start, considering where we’ve been the last couple of years, we’ll take it,” Mahar coach Chris Bailey said. “I told the boys, how does it feel to be 2-0? And they’re all excited. It’s great, but we still have some work to do.
“We have a great team coming in next week, so we’ve got that in front of us.”
Coincidentally, that team coming in is the other North Adams high school. Drury will be at Mahar Friday night, and Drury is only nine-tenths of a mile up the street from McCann.
The Hornets won the toss Friday night and elected to receive. Their first drive under the lights did not go well.
On the third play, McCann quarterback Caleb O’Brien overthrew target Joe Roy and Mahar’s Sayyid Roberts intercepted on the Hornet 36-yard line. Nine plays later, Lemcke scored on a seven-yard run. He converted the first third down of the game for Mahar, which converted both of its third-down opportunities in the first half.
The point after kick by Nathan Danielson was blocked, as he kicked the ball into the pile, and Mahar had a 6-0 lead.
McCann’s second offensive possession was just as bad as the first. Mahar’s Connor Sluder blocked Parker Hart’s punt and the Senators were in business on the Hornets 15.
For the second time, Lemcke converted on third down, gaining three yards on third and three from the McCann eight. Two plays later, Cacciolfi went behind right tackle Sam DeJackomie into the end zone. Lemcke ran the ball in on the conversion, giving Mahar a 14-0 lead.
“When a team makes mistakes, we have to take advantage,” Bailey said. “We came out last week a little bit slow. So we talked about having a fast start this week, and that was it. That’s what we needed to get rolling. When you have a team like McCann, if they get rolling, can be a problem, so we wanted to make sure we jumped on them early.”
Mahar had the ball six times in the first half, and scored touchdowns on all six. Two of the scores came on big runs in the second quarter. Cacciolfi scored on a 35-yard run while Lemcke, who ran for a game-high 109 yards on 11 carries, went 54 yards for a touchdown with 2:31 left in the half.
The halftime score was 41-0 because after Cacciolfi scored with 19 seconds left, Danielson’s kick failed.
“It comes down to some missed assignments. We keep emphasizing that each day in practice,” McCann coach John LeClair said. “It is a young team. We have a lot of sophomores and freshmen, and first-year players that never played at all. For them, every snap, every day is a learning experience for them.”
Another McCann mistake, this time a bad punt snap, gave Mahar the ball on the Hornet 14-yard line midway through the third quarter, and backup quarterback Jayden Delgado scored on a 14-yard run.
The Hornets, which did not score in last week’s loss at Franklin Tech, got on the board when reserve quarterback Matthew Morris — playing up on the ensuing kickoff — caught the short line drive and returned it 50 yards for a touchdown. He went to his right and cut back left, outrunning the Mahar defenders to the end zone.
The final touchdown came after the Hornets got a little bit of luck. A punt grazed Delgado and the Hornets recovered on their 40. Nine plays later, Morris found an open Cooper Walden in the left flat, and Walden got into the end zone for McCann’s first offensive score of the season.
Morris led McCann with 31 yards rushing on seven carries, and completed 1-of-2 passes for 13 yards and the touchdown.