Defense leads the way as Pelham football blanks ConVal in win (video)

PELHAM - All year, the Pelham High School football team has been looking for a way to get fired up at the start of each game.

Saturday night against ConVal, the Pythons found it.

Pelham's defense held the Cougars in check from start to finish, and the Pythons got touchdowns from Robert Ryan and Mason Fecteau on the way to a 12-0 win over ConVal in a Division II South Conference game.

Ryan caught a 20-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Ian Hoey just before halftime to give Pelham the lead and Fecteau scored on fourth-and-goal from the 6-yard line early in the fourth quarter to give the Pythons (3-3) room to breath as ConVal tried to come back.

"I couldn’t have asked for a better performance," Pelham coach Tom Babaian said. "They played the way I’d been hoping for all year. They were tremendous. We had a very spirited practice Thursday and Friday and it made the difference. They believed they could win and they did."

Fecteau finished with 47 total yards of offense and Brett Lindsay rushed for 68 yards while Hoey was 5 of 14 passing for 103 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions. Chris Barsalou caught two of those passes for 47 yards.

Defensively, Pelham held ConVal (4-2) to 118 yards, dropping as many as seven back into pass defense to slow the Cougars' passing attack. Quarterback Keenan Wilson, making his second straight start for injured Dan Spezzaferri, was 9 of 26 through the air for just 61 yards and a pick.

Scott Stanley had 54 yards rushing for ConVal and caught three passes for 34 yards, but no on else had more than 13 yards for the Cougars. Makeen Wilson had just three catches for 11 yards.

"We made too many mistakes," ConVal coach Paul Landau said. "Offensively, we hurt ourselves with too many penalties. We couldn’t really get any of that going. It’s tough, they dropped seven into coverage and you’ve got to be able to run the ball in that situation. They were fired up and they took it to us."

ConVal's offense crossed midfield six times, but the Cougars only got inside the Pelham 30-yard line once, late in the fourth quarter, and turned the ball over on downs at the Pythons' 25-yard line.

"We’ve struggled in past weeks with our pass defense," Ryan said. "It was awful the first three or four weeks. We had a good week of practice, everybody knew what they were doing, we were ready to go."

Ryan helped set up his own touchdown in the second quarter, drawing a pass interference call on fourth-and-4 at ConVal's 35. On the next play, Hoey put the ball up in the end zone for Ryan to go get and the senior beat ConVal's Clayton Coons for the score with 1:13 left in the half.

Pelham's defense forced a punt on the first possession of the second half and the kick was sort, going out of bounds at Pelham's 43. The Pythons started to put a drive together behind the running of Lindsay, getting down to the ConVal 20-yard line.

On third-and-10 from the 20, Hoey tried to get the ball to Charlie Katin (62 yards of offense) near the goal line, but Makeen Wilson came up with the interception to end the drive. But Pelham returned the favor, as Fecteau picked off Keenan Wilson five plays later, giving the Pythons a first down at the Cougars' 39.

Nine plays later, Fecteau cut back through the ConVal defense and dove for the end zone to give Pelham a two-score lead with 11:12 left in the game.

"That was security," Babaian said. "We knew going to the end, we could take a few more chances defensively and do some of the things we wanted to do with our blitz packages, so that helped out."

The Cougars were forced to hurry their offense in order to get two scores, and went three-and-out on their first two possessions following the touchdown, and the Pelham defense came up with stops on the final two drives, including an interception by Katin with 25 seconds left to end the game.