Gloucester roars past Swampscott in football opener

GLOUCESTER – It was about as good an effort as Gloucester coach Paul Ingram could have hoped for on opening night as his team faced Swampscott at Newell Stadium on Friday.Gloucester41Swampscott24 The Fishermen didn’t miss a beat, scoring the first seven times they had the football to overcome an early Swampscott lead and take a 41-24 win in front of a packed house.”I thought that we looked really crisp offensively,” Ingram said. “And our defense did a good job also. That’s a hard team to play in a first game.”Trying to break in several new players on offense and get its defense use to a new system, the Big Blue paid for several critical mistakes but didn’t pack it in down 41-10 in the third quarter, putting up a couple of touchdowns in the fourth quarter to make things mildly interesting.”Gloucester has such great team speed and they executed at such a high level,” Swampscott coach Steve Dembowski said. “If that’s a first game and they played that good, I’d like to see how they do against the best teams in the state. I’d buy a ticket for that game and go watch.”Swampscott simply had no answer for the Gloucester ground game. Tailback Gilbert Brown rushed for 170 yards and three scores; fullback Justin Shairs had 68 yards and two touchdowns while also catching a third from Joe Avila and wingback Brandon Cusamano added 84 yards.”We have pretty much a new offensive line and for us to run like that was great,” Ingram said.Swampscott took a 3-0 lead in the first quarter when Steven Page booted a 26-yard field goal to cap the game’s opening drive. The Big Blue wouldn’t be in front for long, though, as Brown raced 56 yards on Gloucester’s first play of the season to make it 7-3.Brown added a 22-yard run on the first play of the second quarter to make it 14-3 and then a 10-yarder following a Swampscott punt to give the Fishermen a 21-3 lead with 8:08 left in the half.Swampscott made things interesting on the kickoff as Oliver Narcisse took Zach Philpott’s boot 87 yards to the house to cut the lead to 21-10. But Gloucester wasn’t done as Shairs caught his touchdown pass and then added a one yard plunge on the final play of the half to make it 35-10 Fishermen at the break.The lead went to 41-10 on Shairs’ third score of the night 60 seconds into the third quarter. Swampscott would get on the board early in the fourth on a two yard Jermaine Kelly run and then closed the scoring with Phil Larkin’s three-yard run with 3:03 to go.