by Dakota Antelman
With a new face at quarterback, the Hawks fell short of the win in Friday’s game against Worcester Tech, losing 27-13 and leaving only next week for them to snap a seven-game home losing streak spanning two seasons.
Worcester Tech was able to erase an early Hudson lead and take a 21-6 lead into halftime. The Eagles then tacked on six more points on a third quarter David Carrigan touchdown and only allowed Hudson back into the end zone in the final minutes of the game when Tony Francolini scored on a 9-yard run.
“We just couldn’t get it going,” said head coach Dan McAnespie. “Our blocking was bad. Our execution was bad. We just couldn’t get it going.”
Throughout the game, the Hawks were without quarterback Stephen Miranda who was sidelined by a shoulder injury he suffered during last week’s 18-8 loss to Oakmont. After he walked away from the game with lingering shoulder pain, his coaches decided to take him out of this week’s game, electing instead to send in junior Cory Clemons as Hudson’s quarterback.
“[He] couldn’t carry the ball,” McAnespie said of Miranda. “Putting him in right now would be a bad idea. We’re going to give him another week to heal, and then he’s going to go next week for sure.”
Clemons, who had been playing receiver this season, was already acclimated to the Hudson offense as one of Miranda’s primary targets on pass plays.
His familiarity with the receiving side of the Hudson offense, however, meant that he entered Friday’s game without much experience throwing to his teammates. While he would turn to the pass game 17 times against the Eagles, completing seven passes for 58 total yards, he said that his lack of familiarity with his receivers did have an effect on his ability to make successful passes.
“These past couple weeks I’ve been playing receiver, so I haven’t gotten the timing down with everybody. It would have been nice to get a little bit more reps,” Clemons said. “This week we did improve a lot but not enough to get the win.”
For Coach McAnespie, who saw Clemons sacked on five separate occasions during the game and watched 10 of his 17 passes fall as incompletions, his junior quarterback’s debut highlighted aspects of the team’s skills that needed improvement.
“He threw the ball OK,” McAnespie said of Clemons. “We had some drops out there. We can’t do that anymore. We got to get better on our offensive line too, but Corey is throwing the ball pretty well.”
Larger than Clemons and the pass game was the Hawks’ hope for a home victory that has eluded them since Week 7 of last year. Though Friday’s loss was the Hawks’ second highest scoring output at home this season, it was also their fifth loss in five games at the Morgan Bowl this fall.
As the team has continued to lose at home, however, portions of the Red Sea have regularly shown up for games and the team has continued to push for the win, a fact not lost on Clemons and his teammates. For him, moving on from Friday’s loss and getting a win in their final home game next week against Burncoat is crucial, no matter who the Hawks use to do it.
“Whether it’s me at quarterback or Stephen at quarterback, it doesn’t matter. I want to win next week, especially for the seniors because it’s going to be their last game playing on this Morgan Bowl,” he said. “It’s a great field, and I feel bad for them that we haven’t got them a win on it this year.”
