SWAMPSCOTT — Marblehead spoiled the first powderpuff football game on the new Blocksidge Field Saturday morning, taking down Swampscott, 35-7, to win bragging rights for the fourth straight year.
The Magicians had a huge game on both sides of the ball, with five different players scoring touchdowns. In addition, there were multiple big performances on defense.
“Everyone played awesome and the girls are very excited,” said Marblehead coach Jacqui Bouchard. “My coaches did a great job running the show and getting everyone in the game, and we played exactly how we’ve been practicing. It was a great win.”
The Magicians had rushing touchdowns from Gabriella Mark (67 rush yards), Kasche Clark (21 rush yards), Chase Davies (31 rush yards) and Katie Knight (51 rush yards), while Lexi Bostley (78 receiving yards) caught a touchdown pass.
Hannah Garthe threw a touchdown pass and kicked all five extra points for Marblehead. On the defensive side of the ball, Olivia Schauer had an interception.
The lone touchdown for Swampscott was scored by Anna Cilley, who rushed for 40 yards. Julianna Rhoads (39 yards) and Riley Lord (16) also had big days for the Big Blue.
“Obviously it wasn’t our best day on the field out there, but it was a great day overall regardless,” said Swampscott coach Joe Tenney. “We got everyone out there on the field, we had a chance to run some trick plays and everyone had fun. Sure, it would’ve been great to win, but being a part of this great event was a lot of fun as always.”
Marblehead came out and set the tone early on. After the Magicians’ first run of the game was stopped for a one-yard loss, Mark took the second handoff and broke through the line for a 60-yard touchdown. The Magicians then forced a three-and-out and got the ball back. Mark then ran for a 52-yard touchdown on the very first Marblehead play of that drive, but it was called back on a holding penalty. Still, it only took three plays before Davies took a handoff around the right side and ran 31 yards for a score to make it 14-0.
The Big Blue tried to grab some of the momentum back on the ensuing drive. Swampscott started building the momentum up over the course of an eight-play drive, then they finally struck it big. The Big Blue ran a double reverse play that ended up in the hands of Cilley and totally fooled the Marblehead defense, and Cilley took it 29 yards to the house to cut the deficit in half.
But unfortunately for Swampscott, Marblehead responded just two plays later when Clark took her only carry of the game 21 yards for a score to make it 21-7 at halftime.
Swampscott tried to score on the first drive of the second half, driving all the way into the red zone. Then the Big Blue tried to capitalize with a surprise pass play, but Schauer jumped the route and grabbed the interception to kill the drive.
On the very next play, Marblehead ran a trick halfback pass play in which quarterback Annie Ronan pitched the ball back to Garthe, who then fired a pass to a wide-open Bostley for a 78-yard touchdown to effectively seal the win.
“We worked on that play a lot, and it ended up working perfectly,” said Marblehead assistant coach Matt Mills. “So it feels really great to see all that practice pay off. We just figured that it was a perfect time to run that play after the interception and it turned out to be really big for us.”
After Knight extended the lead even further with a 32-yard touchdown run on the Magicians’ next drive, the game was truly in the bag.
The game will come to Piper Field next year, where Marblehead will hope to make it five wins in a row.
