NORTH ADAMS — It wasn’t as clean as it could have been, but Drury took care of business at home, beating Smith Vocational 44-8 on Saturday for Senior Day, and improving to 5-0 on the season.
“Feels amazing, I’ve played on this team for four years, I don’t think I would want it to end any other way,” Drury senior Gabe Perin said.
“It’s always nice, most of those seniors have been with me since eighth grade,” Drury head coach Al Marceau said. “When they started, I started and we had 15 eligible players our first game. They’ve been playing right up through. They built this program, they really have done a lot of recruiting, gotten young kids to come out. They assimilated the [Mount] Greylock kids with no problem. These seniors are an awesome group… They’re good young men.”
Drury’s offense had more mistakes than normal in the first half, but its defense more than did its job. On the Viking’s first three offensive plays, Blue Devil senior Gabe Perin had a tackle for loss, combined for a stuff and then sacked Smith Vocational quarterback Clayden Paine in the end zone after a low snap for a safety, just 1 minute, 40 seconds into the game.
“I kinda just wanted to come out and show ‘em what we were made of and what we were gonna do all day, and that was just punish ‘em. Just straight from the beginning. First play of the game, first drive of the game,” Perin said.
Drury’s Judge Martin had 2½ tackles for loss, senior Pat McConnell had one and Hunter Marceau had ½. Louis Guillotte had a big sack to force a punt in the second quarter. Also in the second quarter, a Drury defensive back tipped up a pass and senior Amont David completed the drill by grabbing the ball for an interception.
With just 1:32 left in the first half, Smith Vocational was at its own 40-yard line when the quarterback didn’t see linebacker and senior captain Jayshawn Moore lurking in the middle. Moore jumped up and snagged the ball to complete a first half Blue Devil shutout. Later in the second half, Parker Smith tipped up a ball and McConnell snagged it for another interception.
Guillotte led Drury’s offense once again, rushing 10 times for 107 yards and four touchdowns on the ground. He had long gains of 15, 25, 14 and 27 but showed short-yardage capability, with scoring pops of two, two, three and five yards. Moore helped out with seven carries for 63 yards and a 29-yard touchdown scamper that ended when he juked a defender and then carried a couple more into the end zone.
With seconds left in the third quarter Smith Vocational scored on a huge 80-yard catch-and-run touchdown from Paine to Elliot Gomes. Drury’s second unit didn’t falter, leaning on the ground game of Caelan Briggs and Desmond Cobb to drive down the field. Briggs made defenders miss on a 20-yard run and then a few plays later, punched it in from eight yards out.
Smith Voc. was 0-6 coming in and Drury faces Monument Mountain (5-1) this week in the final Tri-County game of the season. With such a big game on the horizon, Drury did its best not to overlook its opponent, but that might have impacted some of the sloppy play early on.
“Unfortunately, even with film, the kids, they know, they look at the records, they look at the scores,” Marceau said. “We harped on them all week, you can’t take anybody, especially a team that throws the ball. You cannot take them lightly. Cause it takes two pass breakdowns early in the game, you get them [the opposition] excited… You have to come out and you have to stop them early and often.”
Drury did try out some new wrinkles, especially on offense, which also contributed to the less crisp performance.
“When you only install it over the course of a week, some of it we ran really well, some of it we didn’t,” Marceau said. “But I expected that. This was a game to try it out in and see what we can take forward and what we gotta let go.”