Swampscott grinds out win over Salem

SALEM – No one is ever going to confuse Steve Dembowski with, say, Tom Osborne or Woody Hayes, but for one night the Swampscott High football team got it done with its running game and defense.Swampscott (6-1) picked up nearly twice as many yards on the ground than the air, and held Salem (1-6) to just 26 yards of offense and one first down in a 28-7 win over the Witches, Friday night, at Bertram Field.Evan Rhodes ran for 104 yards and a touchdown, while Michael Walsh added 94 yards and a rushing score. Walsh also threw a 43-yard touchdown pass to Nick Meninno to highlight what was, at least for Swampscott, a pedestrian passing game. Frank Legere added an 8-yard touchdown run.Edwin Alcantara scored Salem’s only touchdown in the first quarter. Swampscott was led defensively by end Joe DeSalvo, who twice sacked elusive Salem quarterback Christian Dunston and recovered a fumble.Salem didn’t cross midfield in the second half. The Witches’ deepest penetration was their own 47-yard line.”Our defense played well, and that’s going to be the key for us,” Dembowski said. “Once we adjusted (to Salem’s) two tight end set, we did a good job. We’re still a team that’s evolving, and we got a win.”Salem coach Scott Connolly credited Walsh with reading Salem’s defense and making the right decisions.”When we put five in the box, they’d run it, and he (Walsh) runs like a fullback,” Connolly said. “When we’d have six in the box, he’d throw it. He’s just a great player.”The Big Blue scored on their first possession, an 87-yard march that featured seven runs on eight plays, the biggest of which was a 41-yard burst by Rhodes. Walsh scampered in from the 8-yard line and Swampscott led, 7-0, with 6:51 left in the first quarter.Salem answered with a 67-yard scoring drive that included a 29-yard throw from Dunston to Patrick Charlton, and Alcantara busted in from the 2-yard line two plays later.Neither team scored again until Walsh found Richard Sullivan (6 receptions-54 yards) for 20 yards and then hooked up with Meninno, who made a leaping grab along the right sideline to comprise a 2-play drive that gave the Big Blue a 14-7 lead with 4:59 left in the first half.Salem marched inside Swampscott’s 10-yard line in the final minute of the second quarter, but the Big Blue held, with Mark Lausier forcing Dunston to throw the ball out-of-bounds on fourth down with 14 seconds left in the first half.”We’ve got to punch that in,” Connolly said. “We felt like we played a pretty good first half, but 14-14 is a lot different than 14-7.”Swampscott started to pull away in the third quarter when a 73-yard drive that featured mostly running from Walsh and Rhodes resulted in a 4-yard touchdown run from Rhodes. DeSalvo’s fumble recovery at Salem’s 35-yard line early in the fourth quarter set up Swampscott for its last score. The key play was a 20-yard completion from Walsh to Sullivan on 4th-and-4, and three plays later Walsh barreled in from the 2 to make the score 28-7 with 6:16 left in the game.