Anyone who has been around high school football had to know the St. Bernard/Norwich Tech Saints had their hands full with Hillhouse very early on.
Standing on the sidelines, I was watching Hillhouse, which won 40-0 to advance to the Class M championship, fly to the ball and when they got there- they hit.
"On most of my carries, I saw somewhat of a hole, hit the hole, there was no more hole," St. Bernard junior Christian Mulcahy said.
The Academics truly made it academic by midway through the first quarter when they had 28 points on the board. Admittedly, 14 of those points came from Saints miscues, an interception and a blocked punt but even without those factors, Hillhouse was dominant. Running back Danny Williams touched the ball three times offensively and scored on all three occasions, one of them was called back by a holding penalty. Quarterback Keerome Lawrence out ran the entire St. Bernard team on a 94-yard sprint to the end zone in the second quarter.
Coach Marc Romano said it was clear who the better team was, "When you have three guys tackling one kid every single time, it's hard to break anything. We had little bits and pieces we tried to do but, hats off, they're a great team."
The nice thing for Romano and the Saints- they can say the same thing.