By Bill Murphy
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Greg Balch’s Windsor Yellow Jackets 7×7 football team is headed to Brattleboro tonight to compete for the 2020 Regional football championship at 6 p.m. One has to turn the clocks back all the way to 2009 to find the last time the Jacks played in a title game on the Brattleboro field. It was a memorable one as the Green and Gold swam past Springfield 19-8 and even more memorable because that contest took place in a storm which resembled a monsoon. No one is certain how tonight’s competition will turn out, but, the conditions call for a dry field and slightly warmer temperatures for the contest.
Windsor, Brattleboro and Hartford have been the dominant teams in the area high school football league this fall. Windsor has the loops best record, but, the Vermont Independent Football League, who decided to go ahead with a postseason when the Vermont Principals Association decided the sport would not be competing for a recognized title, decided to stage the play-offs with random seeds and the Jacks, who finished with the top record, wasn’t given a bye and forced to play both the semi-finals and the finals on the road.
Windsor defeated Hartford 48-36 in a big road semi-final last Friday night. The victory left Balch’s team with a two game sweep of the Hurricanes this fall. Hartford defeated Brattleboro in their lone contest. Windsor and Brattleboro split two regular season contests with each team winning on the road. Brattleboro won the game traveling up the valley 26-19 and the Jacks won down south 27-21. Math scholars can tell you only one point separates the two teams on the season showing how evenly matched they are.
In the semi-final contest, Windsor jumped out to a 21-0 lead and controlled things for most of the game. Jordan Place tossed four touchdown passes and Maison Fortin added three. The Yellow Jackets were led in the touchdown parade by John Cook with three, while Jordan Hart, Jackson Davis, Owen Abrahamsen and Place each added one. Kaleb Swett converted four extra point kicks and Austin Gauld received a two point conversion.
Balch felt his team “played very well. I thought Hartford was spectacular at times. This sport is tough to play when you get behind and our early lead was very important.”
Hartford played well following the first quarter and they cut the Jacket lead to 41-36 with just under seven minutes to play, but, Windsor controlled the clock and put up the final points.
Now it’s on to Brattleboro and Balch and the Jacks are poised to meet the one team who has defeated them all year in the finale. Balch let on that “this will be a tough match up for us. Both teams have a lot of skilled players.”
Brattleboro advanced to that title game with a 34-31 victory over Bellows Falls. The Terriers played their best ball of the season down the stretch and gave the Colonels all they could handle in the other semi–final. Purple and White Coach Bob Lockerby mentioned that “we had our chances We went there confident that we could win the game. I am really proud of how the kids came to work every day this season. This sport is a little different than what we are use to playing, but, we found some things we can add to our offense in the future and we also improved as pass defenders.”
The Terrier defeat came down to the games final play. Brattleboro was driving to move ahead and ran down the clock to 1.5 seconds with the ball then placed in position for a game winning 25 yard field goal on the final play. The game was close all the way with Brattleboro leading 24-21 at the half. Bellows Falls scores were tallied by Walker James, Caden Haskell and Jeb Monier added two TD’s, as well as kicked a field goal and four extra points. Both John Terry and Grady Lockerby threw two touchdown passes.
Bellows Falls captured all the marbles for the third year in a row in the Vermont Division III Girls Cross Country meet held in Thetford last Saturday. Junior standout runner Abby Broadley won the meets individual title for the third year in a row. Her coach Josh Ferenc saluted the strong runner for once again excelling in a season in which the schedule in pandemic times didn’t allow for her to have many challenges in the regular season. “Abby still was ready for this race,” Ferenc offered, adding, She just missed her PR (personal record) today and won easily.” Ferenc took over for veteran coach Tim Eno, who retired over the summer. Ferenc was the long standing middle school cross country coach, who helped supply athletes to Eno over the years in both Track and Cross Country.
This Terrier contingent placed three runners in the top five and seven in the top twenty-six to continue their title winning streak. The first year coach felt excited that, “everybody was given a roll today and everyone did their job on state day, whether they scored for us or not.” Behind Broadley in the impressive effort were Stephanie Ager (4th), Victoria Bassette (5th), Birgess Schemm (17th), Molly Hodsden (23rd), Lilly Ware (24th) and Abby Dearborn (26th).
The race came down to just Bellows Falls and Thetford in the end with the locals turning away the Panthers 27-33. The rest of Division III lined up with Northfield 78, Rice 89, Otter Valley 109, Lake Region 120, Danville 121 and Bellows Free Academy of Fairfax 124.
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