RallyNorth.net

Sat, Oct 14, 2006 05:00 PM @ Pingree

Team	Final
Holderness	36
Pingree	7

Pingree takes its lumps but keeps building

Monday, August, 27 By Mike Grenier
Staff writer

HAMILTON | When your football program is practically in its infancy, you have to swallow hard sometimes and accept the Ouch Factor.

The Ouch Factor? It's what happens when a team is forced to finish a game, even though it's so far behind there's little hope of any way to mount a comeback. It happens to every young program that has to play a long-established team. The outcome is predictable and occasionally painful, but you can't let it get you down.

Playing its first-ever home night game, Pingree's second-year team was roughed up by Holderness, N.H., 36-7, here Saturday night before a sizable sideline gathering of family, friends, students and golden retrievers.

The Ouch Factor kicked in early for Pingree, which trailed 29-0 at halftime and was never in it. That doesn't mean Pingree disgraced itself, just that it has a way to go to catch up to schools like Holderness and other traditional powers in the Evergreen League. It also didn't help that, in this particular game, Pingree threw five interceptions and had a couple of fumbles. Holderness didn't need those gifts but made good use of them.

"You know what? They're awesome," long time Holderness coach Norm Walker, who played for legendary coach Stan Bondelevitch at Swampscott High in the 1950s, said of Pingree.

Awesome? C'mon. It sounded at first like Walker was patronizing Pingree after an easy win. However, the Holderness coach insisted that the Highlanders are a worthy team that's only going to get better.

"We've been playing football for a long time and (Pingree) is just getting this thing off the ground," said Walker. "This wasn't an easy game for us. Pingree is well-coached. They played well in the line and they do the right things as a team. We were much bigger than them and they couldn't handle some of the difficult plays we run. But I like their attitude over there. Those kids don't hang their heads." The Highlanders (1-4) put up a spirited fight long after the scoreboard told you which team was going to win. Down 36-0, Pingree recovered a fumble in the last 30 seconds and scored on the final play of the game when junior quarterback Carlos O'Donnell of Salem, who threw five interceptions but never backed down in the face of a strong Holderness pass rush, tossed a 3-yard touchdown pass to junior Dillon Vassallo. O'Donnell also kicked the extra point.

"I was actually glad to see them score," said Walker. "They deserved it." This was by far the most lopsided loss of the season for Pingree, which went 5-1 last season while playing an independent schedule that it obviously handled very well. But it's a different brand of football in the Evergreen League, much tougher on a weekly basis than anything Pingree saw last year, and the Highlanders are still learning what it takes to compete at this level.

"We were (physically) overmatched (by Holderness)," said Pingree coach Chris Powers, who will return nearly his entire team next year. "That happens in our league. In one game we had a 170-pound center playing against a 270-pound lineman. We don't have a soft schedule. But I thought we could've done better tonight. I keep telling the kids that we can't make a lot of mistakes because they'll kill you. The mistakes killed us tonight."

Powers and his staff can live with a bad game now and then because the future still looks extremely bright for the Highlanders. Football has been embraced at the school since the day it was introduced. Of the 157 boys in the school, 50 of them are playing football. That's a phenomenal percentage and while the players want to win right away, they're pretty realistic.

"It's harder this year," said sophomore running back Pat George of Gloucester, who led Pingree's ground attack in this one with 90 yards on 16 carries. "We're facing a little more adversity, but that could be a good thing in the end when all the hard work pays off."