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11/26/2017 11:00 PMThe Old Saybrook-Westbrook (OS-W) football team faced off against Morgan in the rivals’ annual Thanksgiving game on Nov. 23. After the two teams played a classic contest that OS-W won in overtime last season, the Rams won this year’s game by a much more comfortable margin, 35-0, at Old Saybrook High School. The Rams finished the 2017 campaign with an overall record of 8-2 and a mark of 6-2 in the Pequot League’s Sassacus Division, while Morgan went 0-10 overall and 0-8 in the division.
OS-W held a 14-0 lead after the first quarter and a 28-0 halftime advantage in its win against the Huskies. Vincent Dyer ran for 175 yards and three touchdowns on 17 carries, while fellow senior captain Victor Pascoe rushed for 107 yards and a TD. As a team, the Rams totaled 414 yards on the ground and did not attempt one pass in the victory.
“We didn’t throw the ball. I don’t think we threw one pass,” OS-W Head Coach Mike Marone said. “We had success running the ball so we just stayed with that.”
The Rams got on the board in the first quarter with a 2-yard touchdown run from Dyer, after which sophomore Cooper Pavlovich kicked the first of his five extra points. Later in the quarter, Pascoe ran the ball in from 10 yards out to bring the score to 14-0.
In the second quarter, Dyer busted off a huge 50-yard run to put another touchdown on the board for the Rams. Right before halftime, Dyer scored on a 9-yard run to extend the lead to 28-0.
Senior Andrew Naccarato’s 64-yard touchdown run in the third quarter capped off the 35-0 victory for OS-W.
With the Rams holding a big lead, Coach Marone was able to get all of his seniors some time on the field during the second half.
“The fun about this game was that most of the second half, it was a senior game,” said Marone. “We had all 11 seniors on the field at the same time. We got a lot of enjoyment out of that and so did the seniors.”
OS-W wound up finishing 10th in the Class S State Playoff rankings and came up two spots shy of securing a postseason berth. Despite that fact, Coach Marone is proud of his team for putting together its third straight winning season.
“The playoffs were not the end-all. The fact that we beat Valley, that was a big goal for this team this year,” said Coach Marone, whose squad prevailed over Valley Regional-Old Lyme 34-13 on Oct. 6. “They are the benchmark of our league and to be able to beat them says a lot about this program. It was an outstanding season. It really was.”
The Rams’ notched victories this season against Gilbert/Northwestern (49-14), Nonnewaug (35-12), Granby Memorial (30-0), Lewis Mills (34-14), Valley Regional-Old Lyme (34-13), Coginchaug/Hale-Ray (37-0), North Branford (55-25), and Morgan (35-0). The team also placed third in the Pequot League Sassacus Division with a 6-2 record by virtue of its wins against Nonnewaug, Lewis Mills, Valley Regional-Old Lyme, Coginchaug/Hale-Ray, North Branford, and Morgan, along with defeats versus Cromwell-Portland (12-6) and Haddam-Killingworth (14-7).