There is a hunger and a desire from the Pentucket football program to win every single Cape Ann League game, especially against rival Triton on Thanksgiving.
But the Panthers would be lying if they said they didn’t hear the noise.
They knew, probably better than anybody, that star Triton running back Carl Lucy came into Thursday’s 54th annual holiday meeting with a realistic shot at reaching 2,000 rushing yards. Lucy stood “just” 165 yards away from hitting the illustrious milestone, and came into the game averaging 183.5 per.
But Pentucket made sure that history wasn’t made … not on its watch.
In what was an excellent defensive performance, Pentucket shut down Triton on Thursday morning to earn the dominant 26-0 victory. A defensive front of Liam Hammond, Jesse Wirwicz, Tedy Cloutier, Jacob LeBel, Chase Dowling and Max Cloutier clogged up any and all running lanes, and linebackers Cooper Zaneski and Jackson Miller came downhill to clean up tackles all game.
“I think our guys are motivated no matter what,” said Pentucket coach Dan Leary. “We know how hard it is to win in the Cape Ann League, so we always want to assert ourselves and play our best. … But I think hearing some of the noise about (Lucy) hitting 2,000 yards, our defensive kids definitely took that to heart. (Lucy) is a great player, but our defensive guys really took that to heart and focused on shutting him down today.
“Which, doing that would certainly go hand-in-hand with winning the game.”
Unfortunately, it was a tough life lesson: Sometimes things don’t go your way.
As tough luck and fate would have it, Lucy unfortunately entered the game with a 102-degree fever and was quite sick. The senior captain gave it his all and tried to battle through, but clearly wasn’t his best self. Then to make matters even worse, star lineman and junior captain Ben Woodfin left the game in the first quarter with a head injury.
“We knew that (Pentucket) was a good team coming in,” said Triton coach Ed Melanson “But we had some tough breaks today. Carl had a 102 fever and was a shell of himself, and then we lost Ben Woodfin early. Then we lost another lineman in the second quarter, too. It was a tough break, but I was still proud of their fight today.”
But Pentucket (7-4) definitely did its part to win the game.
For his final high school game, record-setting QB Steven Harper threw four touchdown passes. Miller hauled in a one-hander early in the second quarter to open the scoring, then Nick Carrion made it 13-0 shortly after. The Panthers then put together a two-minute drive that ended with Miller catching his second of the game to make it 19-0 heading into the break.
Then for good measure, Miller completed the hat-trick in the second half.
“This is a really special senior group,” said Leary. “A handful of them got playing time as freshmen, and they had their ups and downs over the years. But for them to put the season together that they had, our senior leadership was unbelievable this year. They were able to put a tough Norwell game in the playoffs behind them quickly, and regroup for this one against a big rival.”
Meanwhile for Triton (4-7), it was a solid first year at the helm for Melanson.
With only seven seniors on the team, the Vikings were still able to earn some quality wins. Athan Eggleston and Sam Harding made a couple of nice plays in the passing game on Thursday, and the Vikings are in line to return the bulk of their offensive line between Woodfin, John Wesley Clogston, Efe Uslusoy, Luke Linehan, Kyle Farrell and Michael Haidaczuk.
“I’m pretty proud of a lot of the stuff we did both on and off the field this year,” said Melanson. “We had a team GPA of 3.28, and we’re going in the right direction football-wise. The future is bright for us.”