Borne, Milford football run over Con-Val
PETERBOROUGH – The Milford High School football team needed someone to step up on offense Friday night against Con-Val.
PETERBOROUGH – The Milford High School football team needed someone to step up on offense Friday night against Con-Val.
The Spartans had plenty of players to turn to, but this week, it was Connor Borne.
The senior led Milford with 192 yards of offense and scored a touchdown as the Spartans overcame an early deficit to beat the Cougars 41-6 in Division III action.
Borne had 147 yards rushing on 22 carries, and caught four passes for another 45 yards, as Milford outgained Con-Val, 336-137. Most of those yards (278) came on the ground and the Spartans had five rushing touchdowns, including two by Mitchell Banuskevich (69 yards).
“I thought it was a great group effort,” Milford coach Keith Jones said. “(Borne) was a workhorse. He had some nice long runs, and he was really ripping it up inside there. We don’t try to focus on one kid. We want to take what the defense is giving us. They were doing a really nice job of trying to keep us from the edges.”
Borne was happy to have the big game, but knows what any week, it could be any one of Milford’s backs that gets the job done.
“Most of it, it starts with the offensive line,” he said. “We trust them, as backs, we know that they’re going to make the blocks we need, week in and week out.
“I think we’ve got a lot of talent on this team. It’s not about one person, it’s about us as a group. Whoever is going to have a big game day is going to have a big game day and we support him. Maybe it will be all of us one day.”
Of Con-Val’s 137 yards, 80 of them came on the first drive of the game. The Cougars needed just two plays to take a 6-0 lead, scoring on Chris Queen’s 75-yard touchdown run 39 seconds into the game.
Milford’s defense was caught by surprise on that drive, as the Spartans had expected Con-Val to line up in the I-formation, but instead, came out with quarterback Noah Powers in the shotgun.
“We weren’t prepared for it,” Jones said. “We weren’t ready for an aerial assault. We made adjustments. The kids, defensively, did a great job adjusting and kept working it out.”
Con-Val coach Ryan McCartney thought he saw something in Milford’s defense that the Cougars could exploit. They tried to throw the ball, but Powers was just 5 of 19 for 26 yards and three interceptions.
“Watching film of them, they’ve got some big boys and they play aggressive,” McCartney said. “We thought we had a better chance of spreading them out. We’re up 6-0 and we proceed to drop about a dozen balls in a row. Had we completed some passes, it would have worked. It just didn’t happen.”
After its first drive, Con-Val ran 18 plays, picking up seven yards, for the rest of the first half, and Milford capitalized. The Spartans took the lead on their second drive, going 77 yards in seven plays and scoring on Banuskevich’s 36-yard touchdown run on fourth down.
Con-Val was forced to punt again, and this time, Milford went on a 9-play, 53-yard drive that ended on a 5-yard scoring run by Banuskevich on the first play of the second quarter.
Borne made it 20-6 with a 39-yard touchdown run with 5:27 left in the half, and Tyler Conney put the Spartans up by 21 with a 3-yard run with 1:12 to go.
Milford almost made it more, but Harrison Urda’s interception return for a touchdown was called back on a block in the back with 39 seconds left in the first half.
Urda got it back in the third quarter, intercepting another pass from Powers and taking it 68 yards for a score. Joe Albina capped off the scoring with a 2-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter.
“We did some nice things early on and got the game back,” Jones said. “That was one thing I was very proud of, the kids, they could have easily just went in the tank giving up that long run. I was happy with the turnaround. They didn’t get scared. This is a good group of kids. We’re really happy with the character of these kids.”
