SPRING HILL – The Springstead Eagles flew past the Central Bears in a 54-14 spring jamboree victory at the Eagles Nest on Friday night. Head Coach Michael Garofano’s Eagles featured a three-headed monster at quarterback that led the team to paydirt on every offensive drive of the evening.
“I thought we played well,” Coach Garofano said. “We moved the ball offensively… I was most impressed with the QB play, really. They all did a great job. It’s been a good competition all spring. I’m confident any one of those guys could do the job. That is probably our best position right now.”
Nine drives ended in nine touchdowns. The Eagles opened the contest with the ball, and they never looked back.
With Quarterback Gio Martinez being lost to graduation, the Red, White, and Blue were looking an individual to step into his shoes. What about three individuals?
Throughout Friday’s jamboree, the Eagles’ coach rotated his signal callers, so each had the opportunity to “showcase their ability against live bullets,” and he was pleased with how the entire room performed. He gave each player a pair of drives to open the game and then alternated the trio 1-1-1 over the final three possessions.
Sophomore QB Aiden Colman would find the end zone through the air on all three of his drives while Junior Quarterbacks Tysen Norton and Eddie Reiser each logged one touchdown pass apiece, but that was more due to the flow of the game than anything else. Each signal caller appeared to have a similarly strong command of the offense as they methodically led the team up and down the field before punching it in every time.
It was not all about the quarterbacks, however. Springstead’s head coach felt his offensive line protected and blocked sufficiently as it opened the door for several big plays on the ground and through the air.
RB William Figueroa and RB/DB Ivan Edwards showed out, too. Two touchdowns from both and an interception from Edwards helped to balloon the home team’s advantage on Friday. The Eagles’ head coach had praise for his two skill players after the matchup:
“William ran hard,” Coach Garofano said. “He ran physical, downhill. He is tough. He is a big body. He might not be the fastest, but he moved pretty fast tonight at times. So, he can move. He could lower the pad level. He is really hard to tackle. So, he is going to give people problems.”
“Ivan, he is versatile,” the Eagles’ coach said. “We could do almost anything with him. We put him in the slot. We could put him in the backfield. He is playing the secondary. We relied on him almost too much tonight.…”
Defensively, the home team held the Bears to 14 points with those scores largely being the result of a couple of deep passes that led directly to surrendered scores. Though he thought they played “pretty well at times” and played “physical” on that side of the ball, Coach Garofano did feel there were “some things to tighten up.” His reasoning was that giving up big plays like those “could hurt us in the fall.”
On the penultimate play of the Bears’ first long scoring drive, Junior QB Nick Demos uncorked a 42-yard pass down the right sideline to Junior Alvin Cortez on 4th and 4 to set himself up for a touchdown run on the next play. Then, in the final minutes of the lopsided affair, another long Demos pass to Junior Johnathan Bunyon set Demos up for his second rushing touchdown of the evening.
Despite those bursts, Friday night would be all about the Eagles and their overwhelming firepower at several positions. Even with six starters out, Springstead dispatched the Bears and appeared poised to translate that into a relatively successful season moving forward if they can continue to develop throughout the summer and beyond.
“I’m excited about the offseason [and] next season,” said Coach Garofano. “I think we have a good group that works hard, and we really had a great spring.”
