Near-perfect Killingly breaks it open, beats East Lyme 42-14
Sep. 18—EAST LYME — When East Lyme High School football coach Rudy Bagos was watching Killingly play on film, he spotted a few mistakes he thought the Vikings might be able to take advantage of in person Friday night.
"Tonight, they didn't make them," Bagos said of Killingly. "You have to be perfect. They just wear you down. They're big and strong and they wear you down. They don't mess around. You have to be your best to beat them. We played well, but it wasn't our best."
Killingly beat East Lyme 42-14 Friday to go to 2-0 on the season. Killingly took what was once a 7-7 game in the second quarter, scoring twice on returns and not committing a penalty until there were 12 seconds remaining in the third quarter, flummoxing the Vikings with its perfection.
Ben Jax returned a kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown, moments after East Lyme tied the game at 7, and Trevin Russ blocked a Vikings field goal attempt and returned it 74 yards for a touchdown with 8 minutes, 14 seconds remaining.
Soren Nief rushed for 102 yards and two touchdowns on 13 carries for Killingly and Jack Sharpe had 95 yards and a touchdown on 20 carries.
"We were going to get out of the half 7-7. We had all the momentum," Bagos said. "We felt like we could play with 'em. We felt like we could play with anyone. To give it back like that (with the 95-yard kick return) hurt. It hurt bad."
Instead, Killingly led 21-7 at halftime.
It scored on the game's opening drive, going 75 yards in 10 plays all on the ground. Sharpe ate up 51 yards of the drive on eight carries and Nief scored from the 20-yard line as Killingly took a 7-0 lead.
East Lyme evened things at 7-7 with 9:53 remaining in the second quarter when Will Anglin hit Rowan Munsell with a 5-yard touchdown pass and Cannon Dean kicked the extra point. Anglin, who was 7-for-11 for 112 yards in the Vikings' first two series, had a 53-yard completion on the touchdown drive, hitting a wide open Ethan Gillespie over the middle on first-and-34 from the East Lyme 10.
It was all Killingly for the remainder of the half, however. Jax made the momentum-busting return on the ensuing kick for a touchdown to make it 13-7 and Colby Lopes intercepted East Lyme's Anglin on the next possession to give Killingly the ball back.
East Lyme forced a Killingly punt on fourth-and-19 at the Killingly 41, but the Vikings fumbled the return deep in their own territory to give their opponents a second chance. Killingly capitalized, going 29 yards in four plays. Sharpe scored from the 5-yard-line and Jax ran in the two-point conversion for the 21-7 lead.
Sharpe had 15 carries for 93 yards and a touchdown in the first half for Killingly.
East Lyme turned the ball over four times, leading to three TDs.
"One of the things we talked about was 'We have to win the tunover battle.' It wasn't even close," said Bagos, whose team fell to 1-1.
East Lyme started the third quarter with Anglin being intercepted by Killingly's Seth Dootson. Killingly came back with a 67-yard drive, capped by a 2-yard run from Nief, making it 27-7.
East Lyme pulled within 27-14 on a 30-yard touchdown pass from Anglin to Gillespie and the Vikings were driving to pull within one score on their next series, getting the ball to the Killingly 15 on fourth-and-8. That's when Killingly grabbed the momentum for the final time on the block and touchdown return by Russ.
That made it 35-14 in Killingly's favor and Keith Perry's 4-yard touchdown run with 58 seconds to play completed the scoring.
