St. Mary’s runs North Shore ragged

MIDDLETON – The St. Mary’s football team keeps running it up. No, not the scores ? the yardage.The Spartans ran for 338 total yards, and, yet again, had two runners surpass 100 yards (Jordan Collier, 125; and John Gaeta, 111), and steamrolled past North Shore Tech, 46-22.It really wasn’t that close. It was already 30-0, St. Mary’s, before the Bulldogs got their first touchdown and from then on, the teams matched each other, possession for possession, until the Bulldogs scored the final points.Things started out a bit on the shaky side for the Spartans, as North Shore took the opening kick and, thanks to a couple of big counter plays, got all the way down to the St. Mary’s 20 before the ‘Dogs fumbled, with Nick Lee recovering.That seemed to take North Shore out of the game for a while.”Sure it would,” said St. Mary’s coach Matt Durgin. “You’re going down field like that, and there’s a turnover ? and we come right back up and score. That’s a huge swing.”Durgin chose the occasion to unveil another runner: Gaeta. He got 13 yards on his first two plays and ended up being the workhorse for the afternoon, carrying the ball 12 times.”He’s our fullback,” said Durgin, “and he’s been running hard.”Collier scored the first of his three touchdowns on the drive, and with the conversion, it was 8-0. The Spartans never let up, scoring twice more before the half ended on a 24-yarder by Jordan Manthorne and a 56-yarder by Collier.If you check the box score to this game, you will find that the Bulldogs ran 21 more plays than St. Mary’s, but that would be deceiving. Every touchdown except for the first one went for more than 20 yards.When Gaeta took it 49 yards to the house on the first play of the second half, that was it, really. St. Mary’s subbed freely (at one point late in the game, coaches were making sure as many people on the roster got to play as possible).North Shore managed to score three second-half touchdowns on runs (two by Ross Murphy and one by Chris Sudak), but St. Mary’s answered all but the last one on scores by Collier (22 yards) and Dennis Bailor (47).Because the Spartans (4-1) play non-league Lynn Tech the night before Thanksgiving, they begin the Catholic Central League/Large portion of their schedule Saturday (7) at Arlington Catholic. And even though the Cougars are winless in their first five games, Durgin still respects them.”Doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s hard to judge off non-league games. They played Winthrop tough Friday night (a 9-7 loss) and Winthrop is a good team.”Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].