Hoosac Valley Rallies Past Mount Greylock in Football Opener
ADAMS, Mass. — The Hoosac Valley football team came from behind and edged Mount Greylock in a defensive battle, 14-12, on a late Liam Feely TD Friday night at Renfrew Field.
A new season is upon us and Hoosac Valley kicked it off in regular fashion, grabbing the win. Hoosac opened the game with an impressive drive including a 30-yard rush to get things down in the red zone. Justin Meczywor capped off the drive with 9-yard touchdown run to give the Hurricanes a 6-0 lead.
Meczywor finished the game with 45 yards rushing, including the one touchdown. Both teams battled for field position for the remainder of the quarter and it ended, 6-0, in Hoosac’s favor.
Mount Greylock continued to pressure Hoosac defensively with a Malcolm Waynick interception that setup a Taylor Cummings touchdown to bring Mount Greylock level. Cummings finished the game with 36 yards rushing.
Travis Dozier Jr. answered Malcolm Waynick with an interception himself, but Hoosac was unable to turn that into any points and both teams headed to the break even at six.
Hoosac received the ball to start the second half, but ran into some trouble holding onto the football leading to a 65-yard fumble recovery from Brennan McGowan for a touchdown.
“This is Brennan's first game playing football, I think he did really well and he’s only going to get better and better," Mount Greylock coach Andrew Agostini said. “That's the beauty of football, weird stuff happens all the time, and this was one of them."
Mount Greylock failed to convert the two-point conversion, giving it the 12-6 lead. It seemed as though Mount Greylock would continue to keep control for the rest of the game until a second interception of the game from Taylor Dozier Jr. This put Hoosac in good position to finally punch one in, but Mount Greylock was able to rely on their defense once again stuffing Hoosac on the goal line forcing a turnover on downs.
Every time it seemed liked Mount Greylock was finally going to close, the defense stepped it up and made a big defensive play, This time it was Casey Meczywor recovering a fumble. This would lead to a touchdown on the ensuing drive by Liam Feely setting them up for the go ahead two-point conversion to give them a 14-12 lead.
“We should have gotten the touchdown in the first time, but we played solid defense and got the ball back with that mistake and capitalize the second time,” Hoosac Valley coach Dayne Poirot said.
Hoosac went on to run the clock out, picking up big first downs with the clock running out.
"We relied on running late, it worked for us and we thought that was our strength," Poirot said. "We got in bad situations early on and forced us to throw and that's just not what we need to do."
Hoosac will get a week break before they get back into action against Chicopee Comp on the road, Sept. 15, But Mount Greylock will get back at it next week on the road against Drury.