Pelham football takes advantage of Manchester West turnovers to win

PELHAM - Going into Friday night, the Pelham High School football team faced five opponents who were averaging just under a dozen points on offense per game this season.

With Manchester West coming to town, the Pythons were going to find out a lot more about their defense.

After a scoreless first half, Pelham took advantage of three West turnovers in the second quarter to build up a 21-0 lead going into halftime on the way to a 35-0 win over the Blue Knights in a Division II West Conference showdown.

Luke Draper ran for two scores and 113 yards on 23 carries for Pelham (6-0) while Ben Maslanek ran for another 58 yards and a score before leaving in the second half with an injury. The pair scored the Pythons' first two touchdowns and Kevin Hardy hit Jacob Chafe for a 10-yard score, with each one coming after a turnover bye the Blue Knights (4-2) in the second quarter.

"Little back and forth and we had to seize momentum by creating turnovers and punching them in is huge," Pelham coach Jason Riley said. "The momentum going our way gets you riding that high and you start to feel like you’re going to have success. They started to feed off that a bit and I think we were wearing them down."

Cameron Marvin also had a rushing touchdown for the Pythons while Hardy finished the day 8 of 12 for 95 yards passing.

But Pelham was stopped on its first two possessions, turning the ball over on downs on its first drive before a punt pinned West at its own 7-yard line after the Pythons' second.

The Blue Knights started to move the ball out from near their own goal line, but on second-and-11 from the West 30, Gio Doria was picked off by Draper, giving Pelham the ball with 10:35 left in the second quarter.

Six plays later, Draper scored from 6 yards out to give the Pythons a 7-0 lead.

Pelham recovered a fumbled snap and a fumbled handoff on each of West's next two possessions, and took advantage of the short field on each drive.

"We played hard, but once again, didn’t execute well enough and it’s frustrating," West coach Andrew Provencher said. "Our defense played hard, and really well at some points, but even when you have a short field, you still need to not give up points.

"The name of the game here is turnovers. We had three horrendous turnovers, you’re not in position to win the game. All three were completely self-inflicted. That’s disappointing."

Pelham's defense held West to just 74 yards and the Blue Knights ran just one play on the Pythons' side of midfield on the night.

"They have some dynamic athletes," Riley said. "They try to get into space and do some things. At the same time, we’re not trying to change too much. We’ve been pretty successful defensively. We rest our hat on that, so it was staying true and cleaning up some of our coverages."

The Pythons got banged up throughout the night, losing a handful of players to injury, including Maslanek and senior lineman Patrick Muise. Both needed to be helped off the field and neither returned after their injury.

"Like every other team, we’re a little banged up, so the horses aren’t running at full speed," Riley said. "We had to have some kids in different positions and different opportunities. Those kids didn’t shy away from it. They’re a physical football team, well-coached, and we were able to stay true and stand up to it."