Friday night’s Tri-Valley League football game between Ashland and visiting Westwood was a tale of two halves. Ashland dominated on both sides of the ball in the first half while Westwood tried to warm up in the cool autumn temperatures, but the Clockers failed to convert their efforts into any points.
The second half saw an aerial attack from Westwood senior captain James Berluti and receiver Robert Bambini, alongside a stout defensive effort as the Wolverines scored late in the third quarter and added another in the fourth in completing a hard-earned 14-0 victory at Walker Field.
“Hats off to Ashland. [Dave DiGirolamo] has got a young team, doesn’t really have a lot of size, and he got those kids ready tonight,” said Westwood coach Paul Hallion whose team improves to 3-1 on the year and 2-0 in the TVL. “At the start of the game, his kids were more ready than ours.”
Westwood won the coin toss and deferred the option to the second half. What ensued was a lengthy 14-play, 70-yard Ashland drive that took up a majority of the first quarter. Ashland began on their own 25 and systematically marched down the field behind tailback Kyle Daly and the connections of Matt Henry to 6-foot-4 tight end Matt Perry. After a 16-yard completion from Henry to Perry brought the ball down to the Wolverine 12, the Clockers failed to convert and turned the ball over on downs inside the 10.
“We had a big win last week and the kids read the papers, and no matter how much you tell them to be ready, they see that Norton beat [Ashland] up pretty good last week,” continued Hallion. “We usually like to defer and go on defense first and get good field position and I knew we were in trouble when they took that opening drive and took it down to the 15-yard line.”
Westwood failed to gain a first down until midway through the second quarter, and only tallied a single first down in the first half, while dodging another bullet as time expired in the half.
After regaining possession with under a minute to go in the first half it looked as though the Clockers would just run the ball and go into the locker room satisfied with an impressive half. Instead, Ashland reached in to their bag of tricks and attempted a double pass that had touchdown written all over it.
Henry took the snap, threw behind the line of scrimmage to wide-out Mike Carchedi who then found a streaking Devon Frye deep down field. A terrific catch came up inches short of the end zone as Frye’s momentum from his leap brought him down just short of the goal line.
“I think we played a pretty good football game. There were a couple of times where we needed to convert where we didn’t convert, but we certainly had our scoring opportunities for sure,” said Ashland coach Dave DiGirolamo, whose team remains winless at 0-4. “We played really, really well on defense, did everything that we thought we could do. Overall I can’t fault the effort of our kids, it was worlds better than we played last week.”
Westwood came out looking like a completely different team in the second half, and on their second possession orchestrated an efficient six-play, 54-yard touchdown drive that would prove to be the game winner.
It was in the second half where Westwood found its offensive identity behind the Berluti-to-Bambini connection. Berluti (8-14 for 126, TD) found Bambini (6 receptions, 98 yards) on a perfectly thrown fade route from 15 yards out that put the Wolverines up 7-0 late in the third.
Midway through the fourth quarter Westwood put the game out of reach with another scoring drive behind Berluti and Bambini. The 11-play drive was capped when Berluti called his own number from five yards out and the Wolverines had themselves a hard-fought 14-0 victory.
“It was a good win. My line played good, protected the quarterback and Berluti just threw perfect balls to me and that’s how we won, execution,” said Bambini. “We underestimated this team and they came out and played hard, and we just played better in the second half.”
