AMESBURY — If you’re a Lynnfield Pioneer fan, there wasn’t much to write home about Friday night at Landry Stadium as the undefeated Amesbury Red Hawks (4-0) ran wild from start to finish in a 52-8 rout over visiting Lynnfield (1-3), ending a four-year winless streak against the Pioneers.
Trailing, 38-0, senior captain Luke DiSilvio scored the only Lynnfield touchdown. With 5:02 to go in the third quarter, he hauled in a pass from senior captain Matt Tracy and took it 66 yards into the house, the final 3 yards dragging a couple of Red Hawks on his back. Senior Dan Lemieux converted the two-pointer to cut the Red Hawks’ lead to 38-8, but that was as good as it got.
Sophomore Spencer Brown came in late off the bench and played one short series and gave the Pioneers something good to think about on the long drive home down Route 95. He exploded for a 24-yard gain to pick up the only Pioneers’ first down of the game.
Junior defensive back Joe Attubato played a strong defensive game.
The Red Harks dominated all phases of the game, scoring on each of their seven possessions. They outgained Lynnfield by a whopping 329-60 yard margin and held a 12-1 advantage in first downs. The Pioneers had no answers for Amesbury quarterback Justin Dube (TD, 2 two-point conversions) and the running back trio of Joe Celia (3 TDs, two-point conversion), Connor Scialdone (TD), and Joe Puleo (TD).
Offensively, the Pioneers made just two trips into Amesbury territory.
Couple the Red Hawks’ textbook performance with some costly miscues on the part of the Pioneers in the first half that handed Amesbury extremely short fields for much of the night. A swarming defensive line sacked Tracy four times in the first half alone and held the Pioneers to -27 yards.
All four Red Hawks’ drives in the first half started in Lynnfield territory, three of them inside the 30 with one of them at the Pioneers’ 5-yard line after a botched punt attempt.
A poor Pioneers’ punt on their first possession handed the ball to Amesbury on the Lynnfield 30. Dube started the party with a 1-yard touchdown on the Red Hawks’ first possession. Celia added the two-point conversion to make it 8-0. After Dube returned the Pioneers’ next punt to the Lynnfield 23 at the end of the first quarter, Celia ran it in from the one (Dube two-point conversion) to double the Red Hawks’ lead to 16-0.
The Red Hawks added scores from Puleo (14-yard run) and Celia (2-yard run) to go into the halftime break with a 30-0 lead.
While the second half saw better execution on the part of Lynnfield, forcing the Red Hawks to start on their own side of the field every possession, it made no difference. Short field or long, the Pioneers simply had no answers for the Red Hawks’ trademark ground-and-pound game.
A bright spot for the Pioneers was the kicking game in the second half, forcing the Red Hawks to start inside their own 30 on every possession. Another positive takeaway – no doubt – was the first-half play of the Pioneers’ defensive line, which hit the Red Hawks hard and made them earn yardage.
The Pioneers are back in action next Friday against Triton. The road game starts at 6:30 p.m. Amesbury hits the road the same night and takes on Hamilton-Wenham at 6:30 p.m.
