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Furey, Hatton lead Timberlane

Saturday, September, 20 By Chris Helms
Staff writer

MERRIMACK, N.H. — Derek Furey felt subpar entering Timberlane’s game against Merrimack, but the Tomahawks never would have known it.

“Before the game, the groin tightened up on me,” explained Furey. “I’d gone to a doctor and got worked on before the game, but he couldn’t do much. I was feeling it pretty much the whole time.”

Nonetheless, Furey’s performance didn’t seem to suffer. He followed up last week’s historic 340-yard, 5-touchdown performance with 196 rushing yards, 35 receiving yards, and a pair of touchdowns, one rushing and one receiving.

Furey’s rushing touchdown, which put the Owls up 20-0 at the time, came on a monster 71-yard run late in the fourth quarter.

“I almost lost it on the 70-yard run. The groin almost gave out on me, but it held up well enough,” said Furey, whose club improved to 2-1 overall and 2-0 in Division 2. Merrimack dropped to 0-3.

While Furey did the bulk of his ground work in the second half, Erik Hatton was staking the Owls to an early lead in the first quarter through the air.

Hatton led the Owls on a pair of impressive first-quarter scoring drives. A 34-yard strike to Matt Caiazzo put Timberlane up 6-0.

Just over six minutes later, a roughing the kicker penalty prolonged Timberlane’s drive and Furey found himself on the receiving end of a 32-yard Hatton bomb.

“It was right up the middle, we faked the dive, and they bit on the run,” said Furey. “Our guys were downfield making blocks and Hatton threw a really, really nice ball.”

Defensively, Matt Faia, nabbed an interception, and Wesley Grew contributed a pivotal sack.

“We were all fired up,” commented Furey. “Our defense was saving us all night and we knew we could get one.”

While some of the Timberlane players expressed slight disappointment over the fact that their shutout was lost when Tyler King found Kyle Stetson waiting in the end zone with just over a minute left in the game, Furey was content to be coming away with the victory.

“No, we were very happy,” Fury said. “A win’s a win, you know.”