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Chrstopher, Perry lead Andover to big victory

Friday, November, 13 By David Willis
Staff writer

LAWRENCE — Six days removed from being eliminated from the playoffs in heart-wrenching fashion — with its archrival overcoming a stunning rally to take a step towards the Super Bowl — Andover could have allowed the enormous frustration and disappointment to hang over the remaining two games of the 2015 season.

But the Golden Warriors elected to take their anger out on the field.

“It’s always tough losing in the playoffs, especially to Central Catholic,” said senior quad-captain Arman Koul. “But we had to come out firing in practice to made sure everything was ready, and that’s why we came out firing tonight.”

Running back Anthony Christopher rolled to a career-high 194 yards and two touchdowns and E.J. Perry IV continued his historic run with four more TD passes as Andover beat gritty Lawrence 43-29 on Friday night.

“It was a rough week at practice,” said receiver Andrew Soucy. “But it came down to that we only had two games left, and how did we want to end the season? We sucked it up, we wanted this victory and we made it happen.”

The two teams now have one game each remaining, the traditional Thanksgiving game. Andover will face North Andover and Lawrence will take on Central Catholic.

“All we wanted to do was get the win,” said Christopher. “We had a tough loss last week, so we wanted to come out and play our game. Sure, the playoffs are over, but we aren’t giving up. We want to get the ‘W’s’ and we are still going to work to do it.”

The 140-pound Christopher’s 194 yards shattered his previous career-best of 126 in the playoff opener against Methuen. He opened the scoring on Friday with a 22-yard touchdown, and added the Warriors’ final score, a 47-yard burst midway through the fourth quarter.

“Everything was clicking but the running game was really going,” said Koul. “We were throwing the ball, then in the end AC was just tearing it up in the run game. He was getting 12 or 13 yards on every play. It was crazy.”

Facing the impossible task of following the most prolific passing performance in Massachusetts high school history, Perry delivered another huge night with four touchdown passes. He now has 29 touchdown passes on the season and an Eagle-Tribune area record 62 for his career.

Perry IV (193 yards) threw a 34-yard bomb to a wide-open Cedric Gillette, drilled a 9-yard score into Luke Washburn and twice hit his favorite target, Dan Gemmell, for scores.

On the defensive end, Koul dominated with 14 tackles and a pair of sacks. Also scoring sacks were Mikey Comeau and Kris Augustine and Brandon Marti intercepted a pass.

Mikey Caban, as always, was the bright spot for Lawrence, rushing for a touchdown and catching a score and completing a 32-yard halfback option pass to set up a TD. But he could not overcome the Warrior offense.

“Last year when we got bounced from the playoffs there were too many negative feelings going around.” said Koul. “This year, we decided to band together. We are going to go 8-3 with a win on Thanksgiving.”