North Point football downs Huntingtown

Eagles notch sixth straight victor y

Since seeing their bid for a second straight per- fect season against Southern Maryland Athletic Conference opponents come to an end with a 28-7 setback against Calvert in Week 3, the North Point High School football team has won six straight games since, including a 35-7 victory over Huntingtown in a SMAC Potomac Division contest on Fri- day night.

North Point (8-1, 5-0 SMAC Potomac) is cur- rently sitting third in the Class 4A East Region point standings behind a pair of unbeaten teams from Anne Arundel County, Old Mill (9-0) and Annapolis (9-0), which play one another this weekend. Just behind the Eagles is another pair of Anne Arundel schools, Broadneck (6-3) and Arundel (6-3), of which one is likely to miss the postseason.

“We have film on a num- ber of those teams, but it’s hard to determine which team we’re going to play if we do make the post- season again,” said North Point head coach Tom Petre, whose team will face Northern (1-8), a squad that was on the cusp of reaching the playoffs until having its first four wins stripped for using ineligi- ble players. The Patriots did win in Week 9 over McDonough, 43-33. “First things first, we have to take care of business this weekend against a good Northern team that we know is going to be ready to play.”

Last week versus Huntingtown (2-7, 1-5), a team that won one game on the field and had another win handed to them courtesy of Northern via forfeit, Petre admitted the team actually started slowly and finally righted ship in the second half.

“We kind of hard a slow start last week against Huntingtown,” said Petre, whose team has won its last six games by a com- bined sum of 193-34, in- cluding a pair of shutout victories. “We finally got some things going offen- sively in the second half, but we started slowly. That’s something we’ve been dealing with all sea- son. We’re still a young team and sometimes it takes them until the third quarter to really get things going.”

Huntingtown first-year head coach Paul Friel will watch his current team end the season on Fri- day against his previous squad at Thomas Stone. The contest is scheduled for 7 p.m. versus a Stone squad that lost 43-6 to Patuxent in Week 9.

Neither the Hurricanes or the Cougars are in line for postseason play, so neither is capable of play- ing the spoiler role this weekend, but Friel is hoping his squad continues to show improvement.

“One thing about this team is we’re not as deep because we kept a lot of guys down on junior varsity that we felt were just not ready for varsity this year,” Friel said. “But our guys have shown plenty of progress all season. I thought we played well in the first half last week against North Point. They finally hit some big plays in the second half, but overall I was happy. This week when we play Stone there won’t be anything on the line, but I know a lot of those guys are going to be eager to beat their former coach.”