McKenzie’s rushing, dominant defense help Springfield pull away

THORNBURY >> It was not always pretty on opening night for Springfield, but the Cougars used an impressive second half to pull away from Glen Mills for a 17-6 victory.

Springfield battled inconsistency early on, but used a relentless defense and a consistent offensive performance in the second half to wear down the Battlin’ Bulls.

“We’re still figuring out some things,” said Cougars coach Chris Britton. “We have a lot of kids where it was their first game. Some of it is just getting your feet wet. We made some adjustments and were able to capitalize.”

The Cougars anticipated using a quarterback rotation entering the game and both Brandon DiChiacchio and Johnny Fanelli saw action. Fanelli came on for second half duties and helped lead the Cougars on two touchdown drives, largely behind the legs of Ja’Den McKenzie.

McKenzie was a consistent force in the backfield for Springfield as he pounded his way into the end zone for an eight-yard touchdown run in the third quarter. Overall, McKenzie has 18 carriers for 140 yards.

“We knew what we were getting (in McKenzie). He’s worked his butt off since January and all of that weight room work paid off,” Britton said.

McKenzie attributed the second half success to shaking off the rust of a shortened preseason.

“I think we were more ready in the second half,” said McKenzie. “We got everything together in the second half and fixed up everything we needed to fix up. They weren’t showing us anything special, so I just relied on my instincts to cut and get past them. We just need more practice time and we’ll be ready for ’Stoga next week.”

In the fourth quarter, Fanelli found Vince Puppio for a perfectly executed touchdown pass in the corner of the end zone to up the lead to 17-6.

“We saw that the run game was working, so we went to the play-action passing game and that really put us over the top,” said Fanelli, who played with confidence and guile in his time under center. “The line was opening up some good holes, so we ran some flats and outs and it was working good. We had good blocking (on the touchdown pass). I think they blitzed up front and we called the rollout at the perfect time.”

The Cougars had wanted to make a statement and assert themselves in the second half and they did just that as they battered the Bulls defense and kept them completely off-balance.

Glen Mills’ Quadir Gibson was solid at both fullback (65 yards) and linebacker, but could not help the Bulls overcome their mistakes and inconsistency.

“We battled, but we just need to get our conditioning up a little bit,” said Gibson. “We’ve got to work harder and keep trying to get better at practice.”

A bright spot for Glen Mills came early in the game on a fake punt run by Gibson that was successful. Ultimately, however, the Bulls’ opening drive stalled when Springfield defensive end Kevin Deal sacked quarterback James Timmons at the Cougars’ 20-yard line.

Later in the first half, Glen Mills managed a steady drive that was capped off by a two-yard scoring run by Gibson. Springfield kicker Jack Coary converted a 25-yard field goal with 2:07 remaining in the first half to cut the Glen Mills lead to 6-3, but the momentum of the game was already beginning to change.

Coary’s boot seemingly gave the Cougars the exact boost they needed.

“We brought him up as a freshman, so this is his third year and I think you can see that he’s going to pay off for us,” said Britton.