ADAMS, Mass. – The Hoosac Valley football team started Friday’s game with a methodical 55-yard drive that ate up 7 minutes, 14 seconds.
The next five scoring drives were a lot quicker.
Kamarion Kastner threw for 132 yards and three touchdowns, and Adan Wicks ran for 72 yards, caught three TD passes, picked off a pass and kicked 5 extra points in a 43-8 win over Belchertown at Renfrew Field.
“Kamarion is on his way up,” Hoosac Valley coach Marshall Maxwell said of the junior signal-caller. “That pass he threw to the toe tap to Will Hakes – that’s on a scramble. That’s on a broken play. He’s scrambling, throwing across his body and drops a dime to a kid in a spot where he’s the only guy that can get the ball.
“That was a high level throw.”
The Hurricanes’ offense, which was impressive in its opening possession, seemed to get more deadly as the game went along.
Hoosac Valley ran the ball on its first 13 snaps, culminating in Hakes’ 4-yard run to make it 6-0. Wicks tacked on the point after to give the Hurricanes a 7-0 advantage with 3:46 left in the first quarter.
After Wicks’ interception on Belchertown’s first possession gave Hoosac Valley possession at its own 43, it ran the ball four more times to get to the 12 and run out the first quarter clock.
On the first play of the second quarter, Qwanell Bradley ran it in from the 12 to make it 13-0.
It was the first of four second-quarter touchdowns for Hoosac Valley, which put the game away with a 35-0 half-time lead.
Its first full second-quarter drive went 43 yards and ended in a completion from Kastner to Wicks. Hoosac’s next possession went 54 yards in two plays, both Kastner passes, to make it 28-0. And its final possession of the half went 47 yards in, again, two plays: a 12-yard completion to get across midfield and a 45-yard Wicks run.
Belchertwon started the second half with its best drive of the night, going from its 16 to midfield, picking up a couple of first downs before quarterback Jack Beals was sacked on fourth down.
The Hurricanes went 41 yards in two plays, scoring on a 35-yard completion from Kastner to Wicks, to make it 43-0 and send the game to running time.
The Orioles managed a late TD with many of Hoosac’s starters on defense watching from the sideline.
But, by that time, the Hurricanes (3-1) already could start thinking about next Friday’s road trip to Frontier.
Hopefully, Hoosac Valley will have another week of practice like the one that led to Friday’s Intercounty South Division opener.
After the game, Maxwell said there was a marked difference between the preparation for Week 4 and Week 3, when the Hurricanes came out a little flat in a home win over Monument Mountain. It wasn’t a matter of better effort – just better numbers.
“We’re healthy,” he said. “That’s the biggest difference. We are finally healthy. The illness we’ve had for like two weeks, it’s finally making its way out of our system. We had a better week of practice. We had more attendance. Before Wahconah [Week 2], we had eight kids miss a day. We had seven kids miss a day the next week. This week, I think we’re down to four kids missing a day for illness.
“We’ve had good practices. We just haven’t been able to play against anybody in practice. When you have 17 kids at practice, you can’t go 11 on 11. And so I think that was the biggest thing. … I was able to get Adan Wicks against Qwanell Bradley this week in one-on-ones, And I think it showed in the passing game for both those guys tonight.”
The bad news for the Hurricanes is that while one bug may have passed, the injury bug persists. After losing senior running back and linebacker Griffin Mucci to injury against Monument Mountain last week, junior lineman Logan O’Connell had to leave Friday’s game with an injury.
“Another big injury tonight really hurts us,” Maxwell said. “That’s Mucci last week and Logan O’Connell this week. And we don’t have a lot of depth. So we got the next guy up, and the guy filled in tonight and did a very good job.”
