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Sports

Wantagh Football Tops Calhoun 35-28

Warriors reel off three touchdowns in first quarter and hold on for road win.

The Wantagh High School football team went into Saturday's football game at Calhoun High School with a firm grip on its post-season seeding and a chance to show off its skills at head coach Keith Sachs' alma mater.

In the first 20 minutes of play, that's exactly what the Warriors did – in an offensive explosion that Sachs called 'our best quarter this year, scoring at will, reeling off incredible runs, and generally rampaging across the Calhoun field the day before Halloween like it was a kid in a candy store.

And after that? It's not often that a football team can jump out over its opponent 20 points in the first quarter, and then spend three quarters hanging onto the lead. But in a very real sense, that's what happened for Wantagh (6-2) against Calhoun (3-5), in the 35-28 win.

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The 28 points scored against Wantagh are about as many as that were tallied by Garden City and Carey, the two teams with better conference records than the Warriors this year. And it's more than Wantagh's allowed in the other four games played this year, combined.

To its credit, Wantagh's defense bent but did not break. True, it allowed 254 yards in the air and some 145 yards or so on the ground. But Wantagh put up some numbers of their own too – particularly in the opening quarter, when it scored three times and ran seemingly at will against the Colts.

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It was Calhoun's misfortune to run into the buzz-saw one-two running tandem of John Reicherter and Michael Scully. Reicherter is big, fast and dominating. And on Saturday, he displayed an uncanny ability to change direction in the open field, amassed 142 yards on six carries and two touchdowns in that quarter alone, including dashes of 66 and 65 yards that left the Colts grabbing at empty air. Scully seemed unstoppable at first as well – on four carries, he ran for a more human 19, 22, 22 and 1 yards.

Meanwhile for the Colts offense, the first quarter read like this: punt, punt and fumble.

"That first quarter was as good a quarter as we've had all year," said Sachs.

But a football game is four quarter long and – using Reicherter sparingly as the game went on – the Colts offense got untracked, utilizing a short passing game with increasing effectiveness and mixing in enough running plays to keep the Warriors honest.

After getting scored on early in the second quarter, Wantagh was unable to capitalize on an onside kick and had to punt. The second quarter also saw the Warriors down the ball off a punt on the Colts one foot line but then succumb to a 17 play, 99 yard drive that culminated with a fake field goal attempt and touchdown conversion that cut Wantagh's lead to 20-14.

To start the second half Wantagh saw an 80-yard march stopped at the goal line by an energized Colts defense. Three plays later, Reicherter picked off a Brennan pass and returned it to the Calhoun 15, and Wantagh pulled off a razzle-dazzle fake field goal of their own – and made it 28-14 – when Scully took the snap and tossed a touchdown pass neatly to Brian Von Bargen for the score.

In the fourth quarter, the Colts capitalized on a Reicherter fumble on the Wantagh 45 with a touchdown drive. Wantagh replied with a touchdown drive of its own, on a nice series of running plays by Scully and Matt Balzano, including a nicely executed fake pass by quarterback Gerard Roche. Roche faked the pass with his right arm, handed the ball off behind his back to Scully, and Scully scampered down to the Calhoun six yard line to make it 35-21.

But Calhoun wasn't done yet. Down by two touchdowns with four minutes left on the clock, the Colts made things interesting, mounting one last offensive. With 30 seconds remaining on the clock, Colts quarterback Brennan bulled into the end zone on a quarterback keeper, enough to give Calhoun the last word in a high-energy offensive afternoon.

"My team played their hearts out, and I told them to keep their heads up," said Calhoun head coach Joseph Bianca after the game. "They played hard, and they played together as a team."

"They gave us a dogfight," said Sachs. "We kind of let them back into the game."

Wantagh finished the regular season tied with Mepham for third place in Conference II. The playoffs begin this Saturday but as of Sunday morning first round mathups had not been announced.

 

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