by Steve Bradley
All great things come to an end. On Friday night, the Hoosick Falls Panthers 59 game Section II winning streak ended. Hoosic Valley, a team that has struggled in their football infancy, visited the Panther Den and went home with a historic program changing win.
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It was called an upset. Upsets are when a proven underdog defeats a proven better team. That wasn’t the case here. In high school sports, each season brings a whole new team that can be better or worse than the previous season’s team. Players graduate, remaining players have more experience. Unless there are minimal changes to a team from the previous year, there are no upsets the first game of a high school football season.
The Indians came out and ran the ball right at the Panthers. The Panthers couldn’t stop them. The Indians did not have a single yard in the air. There is a simple reason for that, they didn’t throw a pass. Not one. They ran. Every single play. They were eating up yards on the ground and there was no reason to put the ball in the air.
Hoosic Valley took the lead late in the first quarter when running back Tom Madigan took a handoff and scampered 27 yards for the score. The extra point try was no good.
The Panthers quickly retaliated. The Indians kicked off and Connor McCart picked the ball up at the 15 yard line and handed it to Alex Mendez, who was running by at full speed. Mendez headed up the Panther sideline and ran untouched to the end zone. This knotted the score at six, where it remained after the extra point attempt. It would be the end of scoring for the Panthers. After the ensuing kickoff and return gave the Indians the ball at their own 38 yard line, it took three plays for the Indians to take back the lead. Indian Dan Joslin took a handoff and scored on a 50 yard run. The Indians made good on the two point extra point try, giving Hoosic Valley a 14 – 6 lead. That score held until the half.
After the half, the Indians ate up yardage and time. The Panther offense struggled to move the ball, gaining only 134 total yards on the night. Both teams made mistakes, fumbling at critical times. But the Indians just kept moving forward, sometimes plodding, sometimes in quick bursts, gaining 409 yards on the night.
The Panthers kept the Indians out of the end zone in the third quarter, but the Indians scored two touchdowns in the fourth to add to their total.
Next week the Panthers (0-1) travel up Route 22 to take on the Granville Golden Horde (0-1). The game will be one of two Saturday afternoon matinees in the Panther season. Game time is 1 pm. Last week, Granville lost to Greenwich, 55 – 7.
In other Class C North action, Corinth (1-0) blasted Lake George/Hadley Lazerne, 61 – 24.
It Was A Great Run
Getting to 59 straight Section II wins is an incredible achievement. It’s a record that possibly may never be broken. There are programs that struggle for years to just get to the lowest of those two numbers, five straight. The last time Hoosick Falls lost a Section II game was in 2008. The Panthers have had six years of football dominance, in high school football years that’s an eternity. Highlighted by an incredible 68 – 5 record, the only games the Panthers lost over that span was their last game of the season in five of the six years. Over the course of those 59 straight wins there has been sectional championships, regional victories, NY state semi-final games in Kingston. Two states championship games. In 2012, the Holy Grail for any football team, the Panthers were the New York State Class C champions.
What a run! Everybody – the coaches, the players, the entire community, and Panther fans near and far, loved and enjoyed every minute of it.[/private]