Souhegan football blows out John Stark for first win

AMHERST – It wasn’t the start the Souhegan High School football team wanted, but the Sabers certainly weren’t complaining about the ending.

After a scoreless first quarter, the Souhegan offense – led by Drew Prescott – exploded, rushing for 331 yards and five touchdowns in a 35-0 win over John Stark in a Division II South Conference game.

The win was the first of the season for the Sabers (1-4) and the first under head coach Mike Lochman, with Prescott carrying a lot of the load. The senior carried the ball 15 times for 249 yards and four touchdowns, scoring on runs of 1, 78, 51 and 28 yards, while Cam Kinney also ran for 50 yards and a touchdown.

Souhegan’s defense bent, but didn’t break, allowing 177 yards, including just 64 in the second half. John Stark got 71 yards rushing from Adam King and Cody Ledoux had 28 yards rushing and 29 yards receiving.

The Sabers got off to a slow start, in part because John Stark started strong. The Generals (1-4) took the opening kickoff and used up seven minutes to get down to the Souhegan 16. But the drive stalled there and the Generals’ Jack Glew missed a 33-yard field goal.

“They did a really good job putting a drive together on us, which scared me a little bit,” Souhegan coach Mike Lochman said. “We know they’re not a weak team and we preached defense all week. We worked hard on stopping them and if you look at that first quarter, it looked like we were going to have problems on defense.”

Souhegan took a 7-0 lead with 8:06 left in the first half on a 1-yard touchdown run by Prescott, but the Generals put another drive together, this time getting to the Sabers’ 13. But again, the offense stalled and John Stark turned the ball over on downs, setting up Prescott’s 78-yard scamper.

“We came out kind of slow,” Prescott said. “On offense, you could see we were just missing getting to the second level and once we were there, huge holes opened up. On defense, they were throwing all sorts of stuff at us, and after the first quarter, we had seen it all and we were reading it quicker and flying to the ball.”

The Generals opened the second half by recovering an onside kick, but on third down, John Stark quarterback Gage Huard fumbled the ball while trying to scramble on third down. Souhegan’s Ryan Long recovered the fumble and six plays later, Kinney rumbled in from 9 yards out to make it 21-0 Souhegan.

John Stark moved to midfield again and on fourth-and-8, Drew McQuarrie found a wide-open Christian Coughlin down the middle of the field, but the ball was dropped and the Generals turned it over on downs. On the next play, Prescott scored from 51 yards out.

“We did not feel comfortable,” Lochman said of the lead. “They threw everything at us (Friday). There were a lot of counters and reverse passes and they had a fake punt and an onside kick. We were never comfortable until it went to 35-0.”

“Once we put that in, we weren’t satisfied,” Prescott said. “Teams have come back on us, so we weren’t going to be complacent, but we were in a good position there.”

And now the Sabers might be in position to pick up a few more wins.

“We’re not that team any more that’s inexperienced,” Lochman said. “We have a bucketload of experience because of the type of games we’ve been in. If we go out and we get this one, that acts a springboard for the second half. We can do some damage, but we’ve got to be able to refocus.”