Troy freezes out La Salle in football opener
Flying Horses heat up on chilly night to get started with victory
About the only thing crisp in Friday night’s high school football opener between Troy and La Salle was the temperature — one degree above freezing for the start, dipping below 32 degrees by the end.
A little sloppiness is what you might expect from two teams whose season began 61⁄2 months later than originally scheduled, thanks to COVID -19, although Troy had plenty of heat to roll past the Cadets, 42-12.
“I told the kids earlier, it’s been 507 days since we last played a football game,” Troy coach Bob Burns said, “so make it worth your while here. We put a lot of work in over the last
whatever-the-heck months it was, so I’m not entirely pleased with our performance.”
Still, there was a lot to build on for the Flying Horses, who have been itching to get back on the field since their 2019 Section II Class A championship game loss to Queensbury.
Third-year starting quarterback Alex Wolfe was 15-for-19 for 176 yards and two touchdowns. Running back Xavier Leigh picked up where he left off in his junior year, toting the ball 23 times for 184 yards and two touchdowns.
Troy led 42-0 after three quarters, holding La Salle to two first downs — one by penalty — over that time. The Cadets got rolling a little in the fourth quarter, capitalizing on a blocked punt and a recovered onside kick to score twice.
“We played very well for about two quarters in the middle of the game,” Burns said, “but then we hit a lull and we let them get a couple scores, a couple mental errors. All in all, it was a good first game, and we’re hoping to move on from that.”
There were plenty of things to correct for both teams. Troy had six penalties for 67 yards. La Salle was flagged 11 times for 101 yards, and that was before the officials essentially put their flags away for the fourth quarter.
The Cadets played like a team
that would have benefited from a longer preseason. With each player permitted only two tickets for the game because of COVID precautions, coaches and players from both sides could be heard.
“We need one more player!” one of the Cadets yelled toward the sideline on the second-half kickoff. That was followed a few plays later by, “We need a punter!”
La Salle’s Bo Catherwood managed 83 yards on 15 carries, but all but 13 of those yards came in the fourth quarter, when Troy had backups in on defense.
Had it been a normal preseason, a lot of the untidiness might have been cleaned up. In this relocated football season, errors can be expected.
“We’ve got 15, 16 seniors that have been around a long time, so
the amount of mistakes should be minimized because of that,” Burns said, “but we didn’t get a scrimmage, so first game, live action, you can expect a little bit here, a little bit there. We’ve got to build on it and continue to get better over the next six weeks.”