South Hadley Tops Pittsfield to Stay Unbeaten

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The South Hadley football team stayed perfect with a 35-17 win over Pittsfield on Thursday night at Berkshire Community College.

 

South Hadley (4-0) came out running and running often, led by a three-man attack. On its first series of the game Collin Mailhott broke a 33 -yard touchdown to give them the first score of the game. Mailhott rushed for 70 yards and two touchdowns.

 

After a quick turnover on downs for Pittsfield, (1-3) South Hadley went right back to the well only this time with Tyrell Braithwaite, who on one play ran for 63 yards to give South Hadley the early 13-0 lead.

 

The Generals finally got things working on offense with a few runs by by Emmanuel Nda leading up to the QB keeper for a touchdown by Patrick Rindfuss. The rest of the half was all South Hadley as they tacked on two more touchdowns, one by Ethan Murphy and the other from Shawn Mitchell. The half-time score was 28-12, and it seemed like South Hadley controlled most of the clock on offense.

 

”We didn’t get the ball much in the first half, I was expecting a shootout, but we had a holding penalty on our first drive and that really set us back.” Pittsfield coach Brian Jezewski said “South Hadley is a very good football team, they have some fast kids but I’m really disappointed with our teams effort today, we didn’t come ready to play and thats on me.”

 

After giving up 28 points in the first half, Pittsfield handled the load much better in the second only allowing one touchdown late in the fourth quarter, but like in the first quarter the time of possession favored South Hadley. Their first drive took up almost the whole third quarter including two fumbles on the series, one eventually leading to a turnover for the Pittsfield Generals.

 

Pittsfield was able to respond with a touchdown run from Emmanuel Nda, who led the Generals with 128 yards rushing but it was too little too late. The third quarter was taken up by just two drives, one by each team and time was running out on the Generals. South Hadley continued to churn the clock with some tough running getting the ball inside the redzone just before turning the football back over to Pittsfield. South Hadley tacked on that last touchdown of the game and essentially put this game to bed.

 

Pittsfield will look to bounce back next week against West Springfield, a tough opponent. Jezewski thinks his team needs to play better in order to keep up with them.

 

“We have some weapons even though we are young," he said. "We need to improve we have West Springfield and Amherst coming up those are two really good teams, so if we play this way we don’t have a chance of winning.”

 

South Hadley will host another Pittsfield team, Taconic at home next week.