MALDEN — By its own coach’s admission, the Bishop Fenwick football team carried the old Pete Carroll mantra a little too far.
The Crusaders — especially starting quarterback Cory Bright — were too pumped and jacked. And it showed, as the Crusaders went into halftime of Friday night’s game at Malden Catholic with nothing to show for their efforts. Fortunately for them, the Lancers couldn’t get off the mark either.
The second half was a different story, and Fenwick settled down to come out of Brother Gilbert Stadium with a 13-7 win to run its record to 5-1 going into the final week of the regular season.
“I don’t know,” coach Dave Woods said. “We couldn’t finish our drives in the first half. We got down into the red zone, but we made mistakes that are uncharacteristic of us.
“I think we were too pumped up …. Too excited,” he said.
If that’s how it went for his team, his quarterback was even more pent up. Bright, who was hurt shortly into the team’s first game of the season, was ready to return to action. And while he split time with Chrys Wilson early, as the game progressed, Bright — who missed his first three passes — found his stride. And by the end, he’d completed seven of 10 passes for 134 yards, including touchdown throws to Derek DelVecchio and and Keegan O’Connor.
While Bright was finding his way, David Cifuentes was steady for the entire game. The junior from Everett finished with 121 yards on 27 carries as the Crusaders tried, and succeeded, to keep their Catholic Conference opponents (and one-time Thanksgiving Day rival) off the field as much as possible.
And when the Lancers did take the field, the Fenwick defense was there to stymie them.
“I thought our defense played great for the whole game,” said Woods. “It’s come up big for us all season.”
There wasn’t much to see at the outset. Fenwick, on its first drive, got down to the MC 20 before stalling. But in a first half of attrition, the Lancers started drives on their own 12-, 25-, and 4-yard lines, which blunted their chances of getting anything going.
But if the Crusaders were too fired up to concentrate in the first half, they settled down nicely in the final two quarters. And they finally found the end zone with 2:54 left in the third quarter, with Bright finding the range on a 17-yard pass to DelVecchio that, with Cifuentes’ kick, made the score 7-0.
After holding MC to a three-and-out, the Crusaders got the ball back at the Lancer 49 and only needed two plays to go up 13-0. The first was a 28-yard sideline pass to Lynn’s George Fiskatoris, and the second was a 21-yard pass into the end zone to O’Connor.
“Keegan had a nice game on both sides of the ball,” said Woods. “If we were all keyed up, Keegan was the guy who calmed everybody down.”
With the game winding down, Malden Catholic finally got on the board, with the 6-yard pass from Will Ragucci to Brenden Brown set up a play earlier by a 55-yard bomb from Ragucci to Zeke Bragg.
Fenwick finishes out the regular-season portion of its schedule Friday (7) when the Crusaders host Cardinal Spellman.
