LYNN — When the Lynn Tech football team’s rolling on all cylinders, it’s tough to contain the Tigers. That was the case Saturday at Manning Field when Tech, celebrating its senior night, closed its regular season with a 55-0 shutout win over Chelsea.
With the win, Tech closed the regular season at 5-2 and earned the No. 4 seed in the Division 8 North state tournament. The Tigers will host No. 5 Roxbury Charter in the first round of play Saturday (7).
Chelsea coach Rasi Chau, a former teammate of Tech coach James Runner at Classical, said his longtime friend’s team is pretty impressive on both sides of the ball.
“They are very, very skilled, and very well coached, for sure,” Chau said. “They are well prepared, they play hard, they play smart. Coach Runner is my brother, a dear friend of mine, and he has those guys really flying. We want to build our team to play like those guys, that’s what we’re striving for.”
Tech got the ball to start the game, and two plays later, Giuliani Daniells was in the end zone, putting Tech in the lead to stay with 9:17 left in the first quarter.
Daniells, who picked off three Chelsea passes and ran one back for six in the first quarter, said that his team was well prepared for Chelsea, and they work hard in practice to prepare for each and every opponent they face.
“We came out and really bottled them up on defense right away, we played great on offense and on defense, our coaches really had some good plays in there for us in this game,” Daniells said. “We need to come out in practice this week and work just as hard as we did last week and get ready for our next game, a playoff game.”
Tigers quarterback David Barrios said he’s confident in his teammates on offense and on defense, and at 5-2; his team is ready to elevate their game in the upcoming playoffs.
“We have so many good players on our offense it’s very difficult for our opponents to key on any one guy, and that makes us very dangerous because we can spread the ball around,” Barrios said. “We are at 0-0 now, going into the playoffs, we just have to keep our intensity up on offense and on defense. Our mentality for the playoffs is to do everything that we have to do to win.”
After Daniels opened the scoring, the Tigers scored from all over the field. Barrios ran one home, and hit Robert Wallace with a scoring pass, Barrios also picked up two points on a conversion rush. Angel Hernandez scored on the ground, and hit Justin Diaz for two points, and Daniells had his pick-six. Haidar Bdaiwi scored on the ground and booted a PAT, and Elvin Gonzalez ran one in from 46 yards out in the third quarter.
Runner said other teams could watch film to prepare for Tech, but if his team plays the way it can, not too many cubs can stop his team.
“I think that overall our team is battle tested, we had those two losses in the middle of the season, they were tough tests for us, but we’ve gotten better each week after those losses,” Runner said. “We will wait and see who we get in the playoffs, but I think this team is ready to meet every challenge the next few weeks bring for Lynn Tech football.”
