www.vermontjournal.com
Springfield hosts Woodstock Friday night BY BILL MURPHYSeptember 8, 2017 SPRINGFIELD, Vt. – There were a boatload of questions surrounding the Springfield Cosmos entering the 2017 high school football season. They lost to Windsor 53-22 in the opener and there are still a boatload of questions about this Green and White eleven. Most observers knew the defending Vermont Division III champion Yellow Jackets would not get any type of challenge from Springfield, but few would have thought Springfield would fumble the opening kick-off at their own 9, see Windsor recover, see Springfield line up offside on the next play and then have Windsor find paydirt in two plays and take command 8-0 with the game still showing 11:13 left in the opening stanza. Who said the number thirteen is unlucky? football This is Springfield running back Matt LaChapelle, picking up yards in the Cosmos pre-season scrimmage with Fall Mountain. LaChapelle ran well that day, but we wondered what he would do against tougher regular season competition. Well, it was a tough Windsor team in the opener and LaChapelle was on the run again. He picked up 168 yards on 18 carries. He is good enough to do some of the rushing on his own, but the Cosmos offensive line made a number of good holes against a strong Yellow Jacket defense on the afternoon. Photo by Doug MacPhee Windsor would score three more times in the first quarter for a 30-0 first stanza advantage and raise the count to 45-0, before Springfield would find the end zone, 40.1 seconds prior to halftime on a Matt LaChapelle four-yard run. Dre Jackson kicked the extra point to make it 45-7 at intermission. LaChapelle stood out much of the game carrying the football. He rushed for 168 yards on 18 carries in the contest. In addition, Bradley Bennett and Mason Olney each had a couple of noteworthy plays for the Cosmos. The Yellow Jackets would play reserves the bulk of the second half, but they also generally still sprinkled in starters much of the time but Springfield still outscored them after intermission 15-8. Rich Saypack and his Cosmos set some goals at halftime and Saypack was pleased that his athletes didn’t give up and carried out the charge. “It was a tough first half,” Saypack said, going on to say, “but we went into halftime and set some goals and we accomplished them all. They were simple goals, but, as I said, we accomplished them all.” The Cosmos now await their home opener at Brown Field on Friday night at 7 p.m. Woodstock, who had an out of state loss to Warrenburg 20-7 on the road in their opener comes to town. The first four games in the locals schedule are extremely difficult. Those opponents outscored their opposition 148-54 the first week. Springfield’s final three opponents on the schedule were outscored 56-92. The team just needs to keep playing to get better and take care of business when the opportunity comes. Saypack has confidence that this team will grow. “Don’t sell us short the next few weeks,” he said. “We may pull off an upset,” he said when we told him those numbers.
No comments :
Post a Comment
Please keep your comments polite and on-topic. No profanity