Trojans impressive in handing Avella first loss
AVELLA — The picture of the Class A Tri-County South Conference standings became a little clearer Friday night at Avella.
The Trojans of California took control early and breezed to a 42-0 victory.
California came into the game tied with Jefferson-Morgan, Avella and Beth-Center for first place in the conference with 1-0 records.
The win pushed California’s record to 4-1 overall while Avella lost its first game in five outings.
Avella came out and caught California by surprise with an onside kick to start the game and the Eagles recovered. But that was one of the few bright spots for Avella in this game. Two consecutive false starts and a 20-yard loss off a bad snap ended the drive.
It went from bad to worse as California scored 36 unanswered points to take a 36-0 lead in at halftime. What made that so surprising was that Avella’s defense had allowed an average of 6.0 points per game. The 36 points Avella allowed were 12 points more than the Eagles allowed through four games this season.
Malachi Peak started things off with a 2-yard touchdown. That was followed by a 67-yard touchdown pass to Adin Keys from Logan Hartley.
Chase Shemansky and Landon Abercrombie capped two California drives with runs of 8 and 6 yards, respectively to stretch California’s lead to 32-0.
Shemansky scored on a 14-yard run to send the game into the Mercy Rule for the second half.
With the Mercy Rule, the second half flew by. There was no scoring in the third quarter.
In the fourth quarter, California’s Brandon Meier broke over from 9 yards out with a little more than nine minutes to play.
Shemansky scored two touchdowns and ran in a two-point conversion.