LYNN – The St. Mary’s football team scored on its first two possessions Saturday night at Manning Field and rolled to a 40-22 win over Cardinal Spellman.
Jalen Echevarria scored four times for the Spartans, who earned their first Catholic Central League win the process.
The Cardinals got the ball first, and went four-and-out, with the Spartans taking over on their own 41. Echevarria scored from 48 yards out on the Spartans’ second play from scrimmage, with George Freeman rushing in for the two-point conversion, to put St. Mary’s up 8-0.
Zach Barden recovered an onside kick three seconds after the St. Mary’s touchdown, at the Cardinals’ 48, and Derek O’Leary took the ball into the end zone five plays later. Freeman’s second conversion rush made the score 16-0 and St. Mary’s had knocked Spellman on its heels in the early stages.
Echevarria said his team is determined to come out quickly, score early and make a statement every time it gets the ball on offense.
“We make it really tough on other teams because we have so many good players on offense. We take pride in scoring first and getting an early lead really builds our confidence,” Echevarria said. “It’s not just one person on this team that gets things done. We have so many good players, we really make it tough on other teams to play us.”
Spartans coach Sean Driscoll said he really liked how his team battled and he likes that he can go with two quarterbacks, O’Leary and Connor Donahue, under center to give opponents headaches on defense.
“The guys have been going back and forth and we’ve been working them in, working them in tandem, and I like they way they both played,” Driscoll said. “I really liked our team effort tonight. Certainly everything wasn’t perfect, we had some problems on defense, so we’ll go over that when we watch the films on Monday. We’re happy we’re 3-1, but we have work to do.
“It was great to get off to a good start tonight. We’ve been preaching that for weeks. We came out fast tonight, got our first league win, and I’m really proud of the way the kids came out and battled tonight,” Driscoll said.
Echevarria scored the final three touchdowns for St. Mary’s from 7, 39 and 10 yards out, and added a 2-point conversion as well. Donahue ran a conversion in for two, and Freeman hit Mark Niboh for two to wrap up the Spartan scoring. Donahue said his team really played well Saturday night.
“That’s what we like to do here, come out quick, score quick, push the other team back early,” Donahue said. “We’ve got a big week of practice this week, we need to get better to be ready for Arlington Catholic next week, and come out fast against them too.”
The Spartans (3-1) visit Arlington Catholic Saturday afternoon (3) at Hormel Stadium.
