Durgin gets 100th coaching win as St. Mary’s blanks Cambridge

LYNN – If St. Mary’s football coach Matt Durgin was going to win his 100th game as a coach Saturday – a milestone he kept good and secret in the weeks leading up to the Spartans’ opener – it wasn’t going to come against any cupcake.It was going to have to come against Cambridge, a Greater Boston League team ? and one that is four division levels up from his team.The Spartans barely broke a sweat. Division 3A St. Mary’s marched the Division 1A Falcons up and down Manning Field to the tune of 357 yards rushing, and hung a 35-0 shellacking on them in the process.Afterward, Durgin deflected any talk about his milestone.”I’m very fortunate. I’ve had a lot of great players play for me,” was all he said ? about getting his 100th, anyway.”That’s a good league, and Cambridge has a new coach,” Durgin said. “So, we really didn’t know what we were going to face.”But yeah, beating a Division 1A team, that’s great,” he said.Coming into the season, Durgin had some holes to fill. Much of his offensive line left due to graduation and Nick Day departed for prep school. But Cory Donahue, running in tandem with Todd Collier (152 yards on 14 carries), scored three touchdowns and had 127 yards on nine carries.”He really stepped in and did great,” Durgin said, adding that the rebuilt offensive line also came through.The Spartans jumped to a 21-0 lead before the end of the first quarter. Five plays in, Donahue capped an 80-yard drive with a 29-yard run up the middle that had everyone on the Falcon side whiffing. In rapid succession, Collier chipped in with an 11-yard run and Xavier Gonzalez put one in from seven yards out, with Donahue bulling his way in for the two-point conversion.The only time in the game where things looked like they might bog down a little came in the second quarter, when Cambridge mounted a couple of decent drives.”There was a point,” Durgin said, “where we lost focus ? late in the second quarter.”That’s when Cambridge quarterback David Maaghul heated up, completing seven passes out of eight and bringing the Falcons from their own 13 to the St. Mary’s 22. But the drive stalled, and the Spartans kept the shutout intact.The second half wasn’t as explosive as the first two quarters, but St. Mary’s kept its foot on the pedal. Donahue scored two more touchdowns in the third period, one from 19 yards out and the other from 20, before the subs came in to finish the game.”I liked our effort,” Durgin said. “I thought we came out ready to play.”NOTES: The game was the third of the day involving St. Mary’s. The Spartans swept the Lynn City Soccer Tournament Saturday afternoon. The cumulative number of points allowed by St. Mary’s in the three games: zero ? Much to Durgin’s chagrin, it was his brother, Michael, who spilled the beans about it being his 100th ? With the Spartans amassing 357 yards on the ground, they only threw twice ? and both fell incomplete.