Batavia football too much for St. Charles East

BATAVIA – The Batavia football team completed only eight plays before severe weather halted their game with St. Charles East on Friday night.

Bulldogs coach Dennis Piron and his staff reviewed those plays after the game was suspended in an effort to tweak their game plan.

The late night critique paid off as Batavia blanked the Saints, 28-0, Saturday in Upstate Eight Conference River Division play. The Bulldogs scored on four of their first five possessions on Saturday.

“We had a great coaching session last night. Talk about analyzing stuff. We analyzed those eight plays for about two and half hours,” Piron said “It really paid dividends for us today especially in our first drive of the game.”

“They have a heck of the team and they played clean football a majority of the time,” Saints coach Bryce Farquhar added.

The game resumed at 9 a.m. Saturday morning with the Bulldogs starting their second series of play at their own 15 yard line.

Unlike Batavia’s first sequence on Friday night, which stalled at East’s 13 yard line, this possession ended 11 plays later with a 30-yard Zach Garrett run into the end zone with 1:40 left in the quarter.

The senior running back, held out of last week’s game due to a high ankle sprain, scored his seventh touchdown of the year with a run up the middle. Garrett finished the day with 87 yards on 15 carries.

Garrett credited his offensive line for the yardage.

“Our O-line did a great job today, they were pushing them back,” said Garrett. “They were doing a great job opening up holes.

The first drive also used up five and a half minutes of clock time.

“We had some nice long scoring drives. The field conditions didn’t lend themselves to our brand of football,” Piron said. ”The way our field was, we really felt like we just had to move the ball and keep it away from their offense.”

The Bulldogs (4-0, 2-0 UEC River) scored their second touchdown with less than 30 seconds left in the half. Quarterback Kyle Niemiec capped a 15-play, 90-yard drive with a scamper across the goal line from one yard out to put the Bulldogs up 14-0 at the half.

Batavia’s third score was set up by an East fumble recovered by Batavia's Miles Williams on the Saints’ 35 yard line. Williams recovered two of East’s three turnovers. Niemiec again ended the drive, this time with a 3-yard run at the 7:53 mark of the third quarter, making the score 21-0.

Niemiec found his favorite target, Canaan Coffey, in the corner of the end zone for Batavia's final score of the day. The 14-yard reception was Coffey’s 11th of the game. He had a total of 114 receiving yards.

Niemiec completed 22 of 30 passes for a total of 215 yards.

Saints quarterback Zach Mitchell led the East (1-3, 1-1) offense, rushing for 87 yards on eight attempts. Cam Canales added 50 yards on 12 carries.

“I would say we’re better this week than last week. We make improvements every week,” Farquhar said. “But when you play a team like Batavia you have to cut down on the turnovers.”

BATAVIA 28, ST. CHARLES EAST 0

STC East  0  0  0  0  -  0

BATAVIA  7  7  7  7 - 28

HOW THEY SCORED

First quarter

B – Garret 30 run (Carlson kick), 1:40.

Second quarter

B – Niemiec 1 run (Carlson kick) 0:28

Third quarter

B – Niemiec 3 run (Carlson kick), 7:53.

Fourth quarter

B – Coffey 14 pass from Niemiec (Carlson kick), 7:00.

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS

RUSHING – STC East: Mitchell 8-87, Canales 12-50, Galante 7-27, Macaluso 3-5, Hatch 1-3, Ricobene 1-1. TOTALS: 32-173. Batavia: Garrett 15-87, Niemiec 5-15, Anderson 3-9, Hallberg 1-minus 2. TOTALS: 24-109.

PASSING –STC East: Mitchell 2-6-0-26, Wright 1-3-0-20. Batavia: Niemiec 22-30-0-215, Weerts 1-1-0-4.

RECEIVING – STC East: McDermott 1-22, Williams 1-20, Macaluso 1-4. Batavia: Coffey 11-114, Stokke 4-58, Stuttle 1-15, Anderson 1-14, Albanese 2-7, Fitch 1-4, Thomas 1-2.

TOTAL OFFENSE – STC East 219, Batavia 328.

Sophomore score: Batavia 15, STC East 13