NORTH ADAMS, Mass. -- After ending last season with five straight wins, the Lee Wildcat football team kept the streak alive with a season opening win over host Drury, 42-14, on Saturday.
"I don't think we have won our opening game in like five years or something," said Lee senior quarterback Cam Abderhalden. "It gets us really motivated. We have a huge game next week against Hoosac. It's awesome because we ended last year on a five-game winning streak and just to continue that and be at six games. I think we are going to keep the fire rolling and go into the Hoosac game and make that a tough battle for them."
Abderhalden played a great game for the Wildcats, finishing with 92 rushing yards and two touchdowns. His second touchdown came late in the fourth on a quarterback keeper around the right end that he broke out for a 48-yard score. He also completed 7 of 14 passing attempts for 95 yards.
Lee started off the game with the ball and marched 68 yards on 17 plays, including two fourth down and short conversions. Junior running back Nick Castillo culminated the drive with a 1-yard touchdown plunge. After the Wildcats' first score, Drury took over on its own 25 yard line and wasted no time. On its second play senior quarterback Kody Crosier connected deep down the right sideline with junior wideout Hayden Bird for a 75-yard touchdown to tie things up at 7-7.
Lee regained the lead quickly, though, as Abderhalden took the first snap around the left side for a 15-yard gain. He then found junior tight end Patrick Finnegan for a 14-yard strike. After that it was all junior running back Ryan Ruef. Ruef took his first carry of the game for a big 31-yard gain before finishing the drive on his next carry with a 9-yard touchdown run on a toss sweep. Ruef ended up with 94 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The Wildcats scored one more time before half on an 8-yard scamper by Castillo to push their 21-7 going into the break. Castillo finished the day with 68 rushing yards and two touchdowns.
"It's always big. Every game counts," said Lee coach Keith Thompson about the season opening victory. "We've been there with the way the system is for playoffs and all that. At the end of the year sometimes you wish you had one back. It's great to come out and get an opening day win. We've got a big challenge in front of us but we take it one week at a time."
After Drury's opening score on its first possession, the offense had some trouble the rest of the afternoon as five out of its next six possessions ended in a punt or turnover.
"The tough part for us was that we had to have a lot of young guys come in," first year Drury coach Seth Shepard said. "A really good player from St. Joe who plays middle linebacker and outside guard for us, Cam Winters, got hurt, so once we had to put in our second guys, they had never played football before so we need to work on getting them up to speed. Besides that, I thought Bird had a really good game, Crosier had a good game, and Thaylen Harrison did well with his touches.
"We've got to figure out the offensive line and the defensive line and once we do I think we will be in a good spot."
The Blue Devils' second touchdown came on another nice play by Bird. This time, he caught a short wide receiver screen on the right side of the field and made a bunch of defenders miss before bursting up the field and into the end zone for his second touchdown of the game. After taking last season off from football, Bird stepped in and brought some much needed offense to his Drury squad as he finished with four catches for 120 yards and two scores.
Drury hosts Greenfield next Saturday at 1 p.m. Lee will look to keep their streak alive when Hoosac Valley comes to town on Friday night at 7:00 p.m.
"We've got to tackle better," Thompson said. "That's the one thing that stands out until I watch the film. I thought we did a less than great job of tackling. I thought we did a good job penetrating on defense but I thought when we got there we had a lot of arm tackles and didn't think we were breaking down so that will be a focus point this week going into next game."
