Second half outburst pushes Swampscott past Winchester

WINCHESTER – Through one half of football on Friday at Knowlton Stadium, Swampscott coach Steve Dembowski knew he was fortunate that his team was in a scoreless tie with Winchester.Swampscott22Winchester6 The Big Blue defense had been forced to play nearly the entire first half as the Sachems kept the ball out of Swampscott’s possession for all but three minutes. Mistakes, however, had doomed Winchester’s drives and allowed Swampscott to regroup.And regroup they did, scoring touchdowns on three of their five second half possessions to take a 22-6 win over the Middlesex League power.”We left our defense on the field for it seemed like forever in the first half,” Dembowski said. “And that was because we struggled on offense and they converted some third and fourth downs. But I was proud of the defense for forcing so many turnovers and really keeping us in the game.”Swampscott (1-1) got its wakeup call when Pat Costin returned the second half kickoff 39 yards to the Winchester 38. Quarterback Mike Walsh (11-of-19, 175 yards) hit A.J. Baker for 18 yards to put the Big Blue in position to go in front, which they did on a Walsh 2-yard run.Winchester was then caught napping and Phil Larkin ran in a 2-point conversion to make it 8-0 early in the third quarter.”We got the kickoff and were able to come out and drive right down the field,” Dembowski said. “That was big. And then we got them sleeping on our 2-point conversion.”The Sachems would put together another quality drive late in the third quarter thanks to the arm and legs of quarterback Greg Thompson, but the march died when the senior was stripped at the Swampscott 30 and Keenan McClung recovered with 35 ticks left in the third.Swampscott took advantage of the turnover to march 70 yards in 10 plays, the big gain coming on a 35-yard Walsh to Pat Costin completion early in the fourth quarter. An ineligible receiver penalty nullified a TD pass to Baker, but Walsh snuck in on fourth-and-goal from inside the one to give the Big Blue a 15-0 lead with 8:27 left.”I think that we did some really good things offensively in the second half,” Dembowski said. “And we caused a lot of turnovers on defense and didn’t have any on offense.”The Sachems cut the lead to nine with 5:34 left when Thompson hit Will Herbert for a 15-yard touchdown that made it 15-6 with plenty of time left. Swampscott, though, wasn’t done as it took only three plays to respond via a Larkin touchdown with 4:41 left.The Big Blue defense then punctuated the win by forcing two more turnovers by the Sachems in the final moments.