By TIM TAYLORTioga County Sports Report
NEWARK VALLEY — Miscues proved costly as Newark Valley fell to Deposit/ Hancock, 35-13, in Section IV football action in its homecoming game here Saturday afternoon.
The Cardinals turned the ball over four times with two of those fumbles leading to D/H touchdowns.
“Offensively, we just made too many mistakes, even with all that that happened coming out of the second half,” said coach Ted Hardenstine. “We had a drive we went seven minutes and stalled out at the five or six yard line there and had to settle for another field goal.”
The second fumble came at the NV 19 early in the second quarter and Brody Mathews found Greyson Thomas open for a 15-yard TD pass at 9:27. Titus Callahan blocked the PAT kick to make it a 13-7 ball game.
The third fumble occurred at the Eagles’ 45 late in the third quarter. Four plays later, Mathews scampered into the end zone with a 15-yard keeper to seal the D/H victory. The PAT kick was blocked, but that TD at 10:39 of the final period sealed the win for the visitors, giving them a 35-13 cushion.
Newark Valley also fumbled on a third-and-3 in their own end, recovered the ball, but were forced to punt, and coughed up the pigskin at the D/H 22 late in the game.
The teams exchanged big plays on their first possessions for a 7-7 deadlock during the game’s first three minutes. Mathews found Thomas wide open for a 63-yard strike at 10:25. Nate Hinckley counteredwith a 72-yar keeper down the left sideline, that run setting up his 7-ayrd keeper at 9:23. Cooper Davis nailed the PAT kick to make it a 7-7 contest.
Following the Eagles’ second TD, the Karmine Cataloni returned the kickoff 40 yards to the D/H 39. NV drove it down to the 12 before sputtering with Davis hitting a 25-yard field goal.
D/H started its next possession at its own 44 and took just eight plays to score with Noah Bass taking it in from three yards out. Bass also caught the PAT pass to make it 20-10 with just over 30 seconds remaining before halftime.
The Cardinals took advantage of a little trickery, a 27-yard tight end-to-tight end pass from Tim Wojtysiak to Tristan Veruto on secodn-and-20, pushing the ball out to the NV 43. From there the home team took just eight plays to establish a first-and-goal at the three. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, they went backwards from there and had to settle for a 22-yard field goal by Davis, making it 21-13 with 3:57 to go in the third.
“All that stuff, even the big plays and making some mistakes, if we were able to, you know, those two drives that we had to settle for field goals, if we were able to complete those for touchdowns, you know, we're sitting at 21-21 at that point instead of 21-13.”
On the ensuing possession, Mathews found Connor Mills open for a 27-yard pass to the NV 47, then Bass dashed 47 yards to paydirt on the next play. Mathews’ PAT pass to Micah Simmons made it 29-13 with 3:15 on the clock.
The NV fumble near midfield on the ensuing possession set up the game’s final TD.
Deposit/Hancock (3-1) outgained NV 311-269, taking advantage of 10 plays which went for double-digit yardage.
The NV defense held Bass in check for the most part until his 64-yard TD run on his final carry. He finished with 111 yards on 14 rushes. Meanwhile, Matthews completed six of his nine pass attempts for 162 yards with four going to Thomas for 119 yards.
“We knew going into the game that they were a very capable running football team,” Hardenstine said. “Today they showed, especially with us kind of gearing up to stop that, they were capable of throwing the ball too and they had a lot of big chunk plays. That was the name of the game defensively.”
NV had 195 yards on the ground and another 74 passing.
Hinckley ran for 109 yards on 11 carries and went 4-for-7 through the air for 47 yards and Wojtysiak completed his only pass attempt. Veruto had three receptiosn for 54 yards and Zion King had two catches for another 20 yards. Davis carried the rock nine times for 45 yards and Rhodes added seven runs for 26 yards.
“I think I saw a lot of things that were improvements this week across the board as far as stuff that we didn't get done technique-wise,” Hardenstine said. “Too many mistakes, putting the ball on the ground. We had some missed assignments where we didn't execute on things that looked pre-snap like we would have a good play there, so we have to continue to clean it up.
“The good thing is we've only played one division game at this point, so we'll look to be able to regroup and play cleaner football next week.”
NV (2-3, 0-1) returns to Division VII action Friday night when Greene/Oxford come to town.
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IN PHOTO 1: (L-R) Josh Benjamin, Chance Spoonhower, Kenny Slater. IN TOP PHOTO: (L-R) Karmine Cataloni, Logan Rhodes, Titus Callahan, Tim Wojtysiak. … PHOTOS BY TIM TAYLOR.
