Indians fall 34-6 to Warriors

Senior Billy Phillips (#20) had a nice game for the Indians

By Steev Riccardo. Patriot staff photos (more follow).

FISKDALE – The Bartlett Indians ran into a buzz saw of an offense on Saturday morning and were decisively beaten 34-6 by a solid Tantasqua Warriors football team.

The Southern Worcester County League game, which was originally scheduled for Friday evening but rescheduled to a 10 a.m. start time on Saturday due to heavy rain, was one that the Indians have to forget and move on.

The Warriors put together a superb 53-yard opening drive and took a 7-0 lead, but the Indians came right back and had their offense moving the ball into Warriors territory on their first possession.

The backfield combination of Alex Givins-Perry and Bill Phillips were picking up yardage and Phillips even broke free for a 29-yard pick up but they were stalled on the Warrior 23 on a fourth down and three.

On the next Warriors possession, Indians defensive end Conlin Postma jarred the ball loose from Tantasqua quarterback Randy Harrington and it was picked up by Andrew “Darkness” Delille, giving Bartlett great field position on the Warriors 20-yard line.

Givins-Perry and Phillips once again were picking yardage on the ground, which culminated in a three-yard touchdown run for Phillips.  The conversion failed but the Indians were in the game at 7-6.

The Warriors upped their lead to 21-6 at halftime and picked up a couple more scores while holding the Indians scoreless the rest of the way.

“The missed tackles killed us today. We had multiple plays where they spin out of something and go for a 40-yard touchdown,” said Indians head coach Dane Laboissonniere. “Football is blocking and tackling. If you don’t do that well you are not going to be a very good team. Take nothing away from Tantasqua, they are good team, they have a lot of good athletes. Today they were the better team.”

The 1-3 Indians will now have to go back to the drawing board and prepare for next week.“We have to come ready for work on Monday and get ready for Uxbridge,” said Laboissonniere. “We have to forget about the record. We can’t think about what has happened. We had a close one last week (Nipmuc) and today we looked like we were going to come out and get the job done and we had a good first quarter and then we didn’t make the plays and we didn’t execute.’’

Givins-Perry and Phillips, who was taken out of the game in the second half for precautionary reasons after taking some big hits, both played well in defeat for the Indians.

Senior Chris Vosburg also played an excellent game for the Indians on both sides of the line and also added punting to his duties, at which he did a great job.

Akeem Belnavis (#22) makes a great catch but could not stay in bounds

Andrew "Darkness" Delille(#52) and Hector Champagne (#67)
team up for a tackle

Justin Demma (#66) makes the tackle

 

Quarterback Ricky Spooner takes the snap from Mina Zaky (#77)
while Chris Mullins (#75) gets ready to block.

Read more about the Bartlett Indians and high school football in the View From The Sidelines column published every week in the Patriot and contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with feedback and comments.