Blue Air Attack Downs Falcons

Checking the score sheet after the first quarter Saturday afternoon, the Big Blue had ran eight plays, gained seven yards and punted twice, and stood at 0-0 with Danvers.

Time to go back to what football does best, attack the opponent.

Mike Walsh hit Richard Sullivan in front of the Swampscott bench on the first play of the Blue’s third offensive series of the day, and Sullivan got a key block from A. J. Baker and raced 89 yards to the end zone to put Swampscott ahead for good on the way to a 47-17 win over the Falcons.

“We started out a little conservative, and that was on me,” coach Steve Dembowski said. “Danvers got creased on the ground last week so I thought we’d go that way, it didn’t work, so we went back to what we do and took it from there.”

Sullivan, A. J. Baker (3), Mike Walsh (2) and Aaron Cronin found the end zone for Swampscott. Walsh scored from the one and the 10 in the first half; Cronin scored the final touchdown of the day for the Big Blue, zipping in from the five with 4:41 left to play. Danvers added a late TD by Sam Anderson to account for the final score.

Walsh hit Sullivan for the first score, and found Baker three times, his best catch a leaping snag in the far corner of the end zone over two Falcon defensive backs to put Swampscott up 33-7 with 4:01 left in the third quarter.

The key play Saturday was Sullivan putting a jolt into his team and the crowd with his catch and long run for six points, Swampscott's first pass completion of the game.

“Mike made a nice pass to me, and A. J. (Baker) made a great block to give me some room and I was happy to score, we needed a lift,” Sullivan said after the game.  “Coach told us to buckle down and play after the first two series and we did a good job after that.”

The Falcons tried to make it interesting after Sullivan and Walsh had put the Blue up 13-0; Paul Nicolo hit Nick Valles for a 26 yard TD with 2:33 left in the first half.

Undaunted by the Falcon TD, the Blue took over on their own 37 with 2:30 left in the half, and 10 plays later it was 19-7 with 47 seconds to spare.

Swampscott took the kickoff to start the second half and went 66 yards in seven plays, the capper a Walsh score just inside the far pylon making it 26-7 with 8:05 left in the third quarter.

Swampscott had the ball nine times Saturday afternoon; they went 0-2 to start the game then scored seven touchdowns on seven possessions.

“They started out in a cover three on us, we made some adjustments, and really played much better as the game went on,” Walsh said. “The line was awesome protecting me and they gave the backs some great holes to run through.”

“We had a good week of practice, Danvers was our number one priority and that was what we concentrated on,” Walsh said.

“Obviously to have a 47-14 win you have to have a lot of contributions from a lot of guys, and that’s what happened today,” Dembowski said. “When you score so many points it’s easy to focus on the offense, but we got a nice game from our defense this afternoon too, they put a lot of pressure on Danvers from start to finish.”

Gloucester put a bit of a scare into Beverly Saturday, but the Panthers came back to win, setting up next week’s game at Hurd Stadium with Swampscott and Beverly both 2-0 in league play.  Kick-off is 2:30. The 2010 loss to Beverly still smarting for many of Swampscott's upperclassmen, who watched Beverly win last year's Super Bowl.

“This was a good win for us, the team played hard, now we move forward to play Beverly,” running back Frank Legere said. “The coaches got on us after our slow start today, we made some changes and played the way we can.”

"Our defense played well, and we really got a great game from our offensive line, Sam Gold and the guys played great," Legere said.

“We have to get better every week, this week’s over, now we’ve got a big game against Beverly and we have to be ready for that one,” Dembowski said.

Swampscott, Marblehead and Beverly are all 2-0 heading into week three of league play. The Big Blue has Beverly and Gloucester ahead before a Thanksgiving morning matchup at Piper Field against the Magicians.