DEPEW, N.Y. – – The Maryvale Flyers were coming off a very gutty 14-12 win over North Cheektowaga rival Cleveland Hill last week, while the Depew Wildcats wanted revenge after a 40-19 loss to one of their rivals, the Alden Bulldogs. Maryvale’s run game proved to be the most important factor in a 34-7 win over Depew on Friday night at the Frank Constantino Sports Complex.
Depew head coach Brian Wilson declined to comment on the game, but his defense stayed with Maryvale for the first half, limiting the Flyers to only 14 points. The game did not start off how Depew wanted as Maryvale brought in Chris Hawbaker to kickoff, instead of Anthony Hernandez, the team’s primary kicker. Hawbaker used a squib kick that Depew was unable to corral that enabled the Flyers’ Brian Sullivan to score a 4-yard touchdown to open the scoring up a minute into play.
The Wildcats defense held strong with the Flyers for the rest of the 1st quarter and majority of the 2nd quarter before Maryvale’s freshman quarterback Connor Desiderio was called to do a QB sneak on 3rd and goal on the Wildcats 1-yard line to go up by two scores, 14-0.
The 2nd half was a totally different story for the Wildcats as they allowed a 2-yard TD to Austin Reamsnyder, a 35-yard TD rush to Sullivan and an 83-yard rushing TD to Rashad Law to open up the game to a 34-0 score.
“We have a very young line and traditionally, we’ll see the best improvements from Week 1 to Week 2,” Maryvale head coach Jeff Buccieri said following the win. “We struggled in the trenches last week versus Cleve Hill. We challenged the line a little bit and they came to practice on Monday ready to work and better themselves. They played hard and opened up some holes for our running backs to exploit because we definitely have some speed at running back.”
The offensive line really stepped up on the 83-yard rushing touchdown that was scored by Law, a sophomore running back. In last week’s contest, he was handed the ball only four times, rushing for 11 yards. Tonight, however, he was handed the ball 10 times and exploded for 180 yards, while adding one touchdown. Not only was he a threat on offense, Law added 13 tackles on defense while playing safety.
“I have a lot of confidence in my line,” Law proudly stated about his offensive line. “They’ve been working hard throughout the offseason. They did everything and they deserve it.”
The Flyers, as a team, rushed for 415 yards on 44 carries, an average of 9.4 yards per carry. Along with Law surpassing the century mark, Dylan Casey rushed for exactly 100 yards on only nine carries.
Depew scored their lone points in the final minute of the 4th quarter off a rushing touchdown by Jacob Mlodozeniec, which was followed by an extra point by the senior lefty kicker Matt Wilson. Mlodozeniec also added seven tackles on defense. Depew’s Austin Pilley had a very solid game, rushing for 87 yards on 15 attempts and adding nine tackles on defense.
The Flyers (2-0) will look to improve on their fantastic start to the 2016 season with a Class A North contest with the Lewiston-Porter Lancers (1-1) next Friday night. Depew (0-2) will look to get off their 2-game losing streak when they will host the Lackawanna Steelers, who are also 0-2, next Friday night. The Steelers were shutout by East Aurora/Holland last week and lost to Medina, 48-6, tonight.