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Greater Lawrence runs out of gas

Saturday, October, 09 By Jeff Hamrick

MIDDLETON — Despite an inconsistent offense, Greater Lawrence ran off a three-game winning streak with a trio of shut-down defensive performances. Yesterday, the Reggies once again stumbled offensively.

This time, however, the GL defense held off its opponent for only three quarters.

Playing its first home game of the season, North Shore Tech did all of its scoring in the final period, rebounding from a 13-point deficit for a 22-15 victory over the Reggies.

After taking a 13-0 advantage with a pair of quality first-half drives, Greater Lawrence went three-and-out on four of its final six possessions and ran only five plays on another.

“It’s a slow process,” Greater Lawrence coach Tony Sarkis said. “But this was our fifth game, so we need to pick it up. The more we’re consistent on offense the more we gain.”

The Reggies (3-2) took advantage of a fumble on the game’s opening kickoff, going 22 yards on seven plays with Joey Pizzuto running the final 2 yards for the score.

North Shore responded with a long drive, but ran out of downs at the GL 10. The Reggies responded with a 10-play, 90-yard drive to take a 13-0 lead. The first nine plays were runs by Pizzuto, who finished with 125 yards on 22 attempts, and Marcos Ortiz, but the payoff came on a 13-yard scoring pass from Jean Carlos Gomez to Christian Rivera.

“We’ve been working on the blocking,” said Pizzuto, who saw most of the line that helped him surpass 2,000 yards rushing last year graduate. “We have a good line. We just haven’t meshed yet. There are spurts when our offense can’t be stopped, but we have to keep it going.”

Not only couldn’t the offense keep it going, neither could a defense which had allowed six points in 15 quarters entering the final period yesterday.

That’s when Jesse Wilkins took over, scoring three touchdowns and two conversion runs while gaining 110 of his 151 rushing yards on the Bulldogs three touchdown drives. GL helped the North Shore cause with a muffed punt at its 30 that set up North Shore’s first touchdown and a fumble at the 10 that set up the final touchdown with 2:38 remaining.

“I think we fell apart both offensively and defensively,” Sarkis said. “We allowed them to score 22 points on us in a (quarter). I mean, come on. North Shore made some adjustments and they came to play.

“We have to pull it together offensively and on special teams. We have to work harder in practice and make sure we know our roles. We have to get the physical part down. If we do that the second half of the year, we’ll be alright.”