Siok Leads Lee Past McCann Tech
LEE, Mass. -- Lee’s Hayden Siok completed 12-of-14 passes for 158 yards and a pair of touchdowns in Friday’s 27-0 win over McCann Tech.
You might say the senior signal caller was lights out.
But the Wildcats and Hornets learned the true meaning of that phrase in Week 3 of the high school football season.
The lights at Lee’s Consolati Field went out just before kickoff Friday, and the teams had to wait out an hour delay.
After playing the waiting game, the Wildcats won the actual game with their second shutout of the season to finish non-league play with a record of 2-1 heading into next week’s Intercounty South opener at Frontier.
“This is a first for me, and I’ve been here a long time,” Lee coach Keith Thomson said of the outage. “We’ve had a bank of lights go out and were able to finish the game. But we’ve never had that with a full house, our home opener and really our first home-opener in two years because [the spring’s Fall 2 season] wasn’t really the same.
“Needless to say, I was a little bit of a train wreck. But the kids responded well. One of our messages prior to even knowing if we were going to play the game was: If there’s anything the last year and a half has taught us, you have to adapt. And I thought they did that.
“And they did that. Because we had gone in [the locker room] and said, ‘We’re pulling the plug.’ We had a lot of disappointment. Once we went back in, it charged them up, they were excited, and they came out and played a great game.”
Lee got 90 yards on the ground from Tyler Bartini and 49 yards and a rushing touchdown from Cam Freeman. Siok also ran for a 1-yard score.
Lee’s defense, meanwhile, turned the game around with the biggest stop of the game early in the second quarter.
Down 6-0, McCann Tech (0-3) benefited from a Lee punt from deep in its end to get great field position at the plus-33 at the end of the first quarter.
Five rushing plays later, the Hornets had first-and-goal at the 4.
But Lee gave up no yards on the first three plays of the series and then held McCann Tech’s David Delisle (122 yards) to just a yard on fourth-and-goal at the 4.
“They had a drive coming down,” Thomson said. “The guys bent a little bit on that drive but didn’t break, and I think that gave us a lot of momentum.”
Siok directed the Wildcats on an 11-play, 97 yard drive for the game’s second score.
The big play was a 44-yard pass down the right side to Dylan Ely to get Lee to midfield. The capper was a 6-yard toss to Shaun Kinney for the touchdown to make it 13-0.
That was the score at half-time. In the second half, the Wildcats took advantage of a couple of breaks to put the game out of reach.
First, on the opening kickoff of the second half, a low line drive deflected off one of McCann’s up men, and the Wildcats pounced on the loose ball at midfield.
Five plays later, Freeman capped the 51-yard drive with a 10-yard run to make it 20-0.
A failed fourth-down attempt gave Lee the ball back at the McCann 28, but the Wildcats second drive of the second half stalled when the Hornets’ Jason Knapp picked off Siok in the end zone.
Lee’s defense held McCann Tech without a first down on the ensuing possession, and the Wildcats got the second big break of the half when a bad snap allowed Lee to recover a loose ball at the 1.
Siok took it in from there to cap the scoring.
Meanwhile, McCann Tech’s Delisle did everything but score in his first action of the season -- muscling his way for big chunks of yardage on the ground and completing a throw for 21 yards on a trick play in the second quarter.
“He ran hard,” Thomson said. “He ran real hard. We didn’t see him on film. I don’t know if he missed the first couple of weeks or it was a number change. But he was tough. And I got on [our defense] a little bit at half-time, ‘Let’s make some tackles here.’ But it makes up for it sometimes when you get a lot of people to the football.”
McCann Tech coach Tony Skiffington, with Delisle back in action, was optimistic about his team’s chances heading into next Saturday’s Tri-County League opener against Drury (2-0).
“We can win out,” Skiffington said. “If we get an opportunity, we can win out. Some things get right right, and if we get healthy, we can win out. I’m pretty confident about that with our schedule.
“We’ve got a tough one next week. Drury will be tough. They’ve got some athletes up there. But that’s a rivalry game for us. These kids all know each other. And then we go into Pathfinder, Monument and Smith Voke -- all teams we’ve played and beaten handily in the past.”