Monday Morning Blitz: Newburyport and Pentucket to meet next weekend as CAL reshuffles schedules
Apr. 4—Scheduling change
Newburyport vs. Pentucket football is annually one of the most intense and exciting rivalry games in the Greater Newburyport area, but after the teams' Week 2 matchup was cancelled due to Pentucket's preseason COVID-19 pause it appeared the teams would not get to meet this year. Thanks to a bit of schedule shuffling the two teams will now get to play after all, as Newburyport and Pentucket are scheduled to play this coming Friday at 5 p.m.
Newburyport was originally scheduled to play Lynnfield in a rematch of their Week 2 thriller, and Pentucket was originally set to play Ipswich, but now Newburyport and Pentucket will square off and Lynnfield and Ipswich will play each other in a battle of the league's last two unbeaten teams. In a season where everything has been more flexible than usual, reworking the schedule in this way was a great call and should work out well for all involved.
Defensive dominance
Amesbury football smothered North Reading on Saturday and never let the Hornets come particularly close to scoring, and in doing so the Indians have now put together two straight shutouts. Going back even further, Amesbury hasn't allowed any points in more than nine quarters of play, with the last score against the Indians coming early in the third quarter of the team's Week 2 win over Hamilton-Wenham when Generals' star Ryan Monahan scored on a 28-yard touchdown catch. Overall Amesbury is now allowing just 7.3 points per game on the year.
Weekend of blowouts
This past weekend was not the most competitive in the Cape Ann League's history, with a series of routs unfolding in each matchup across the league. Locally, Ipswich dominated Newburyport and Amesbury squashed North Reading pretty much from the opening whistle, and while Hamilton-Wenham's 21-14 win over Pentucket was close on the scoreboard, the Generals largely kept Pentucket bottled up, with 109 of the team's 164 total yards coming on just two big plays. None of those quite compared to the beating Lynnfield dropped on Manchester Essex, however, with the Pioneers beating the Hornets 29-0 thanks to six forced turnovers and three touchdown passes by quarterback Austin Sutera.
Editor's Note
Good news and bad news. The good news is that after nearly two weeks the computer system problem that affected The Daily News and its parent company has mostly been resolved and we finally have access to our work email and voicemail again. The bad news is that no email sent to my account during that time was received, and I even lost a few emails from the days prior as well. So if anyone tried to reach out between March 16 and March 28, I did not receive your email. For those who reached out during that stretch and did not get a response, please try again! Otherwise, all of you can feel free to email me at mcerullo@newburyportnews.com with questions, concerns, tips, scores or local sports briefs like normal. My direct messages on Twitter @MacCerullo are also open as well.
Coming up next
Friday, April 9
Pentucket at Newburyport, 5 p.m.
Triton at North Reading, 5 p.m.
Week 4 Leaders
Rushing
Name, School Car Yds TD
K. Donovan, Ames. 14 106 2
F. Sullivan, Nbpt. 14 73 0
C. Dwight, Pent. 15 67 1
J. Tilton, Ames. 10 59 0
B. Dore, Ames. 13 49 0
Passing
Name, School Att Com Yds TD
F. Sullivan, Nbpt. 12 17 90 1
C. Dwight, Pent. 6 15 74 1
D. MacDonald, Ames. 1 6 22 0
Receiving
Name, School C Yds TD
A. Melone, Pent. 3 64 1
L. Stallard, Nbpt. 4 44 0
T. Mazzaglia, Ames. 1 22 0
N. Petty, Nbpt. 1 22 0
W. Sutton, Pent. 1 9 0
CAL Standings
Kinney Division
School Record Win%
Lynnfield 4-0 1.00
Newburyport 2-2 .500
North Reading 2-2 .500
Pentucket 0-2 .000
Triton 0-3 .000
Baker Division
School Record Win%
Ipswich 3-0 1.00
Amesbury 3-1 .750
Man-Essex 1-3 .250
Ham-Wen 1-3 .250
