Football: A green Bayport leaves Porters feeling black and blue
This one hurt, physically and just about every other way.
For the second straight game, the Greenport/Southold/Mattituck high school football team was shut out by a 40-0 score on Saturday. This time it was Bayport-Blue Point doing the damage, which wasn’t limited to the scoreboard at Bob Sullivan Field. Two Porters left the game with injuries, one in an ambulance.
Jake Skrezec, a starting safety who also plays receiver, punts and returns kicks, banged up his right leg while lunging to cover the ball after a Bayport kickoff late in the second quarter. Porters coach Jack Martilotta said a player stepped on Skrezec’s leg on the play. Skrezec’s right sock was ripped apart, revealing a bloodied knee. The junior was wheeled into an ambulance and taken to a hospital.
In the first quarter, Tyrese McRae, a starting cornerback for the Porters, was believed to have hurt his leg. Immediately after the game, Martilotta said he did not know how McRae got hurt or the extent of the junior’s injury.
Bayport (2-3), the No. 3 seed in Suffolk County Division IV, was amped up. As has been their tradition since 2006, after pregame warmups, the Phantoms switched from their navy blue jerseys to green jerseys with a shamrock on the sleeve and the initials “KL” in memory of Kerry Lawlor, the late coach who started the Bayport program.
With their gold helmets and green uniforms, the Phantoms looked like Notre Dame, and they played like the Fighting Irish, too.
Bayport’s senior quarterback, Robert Johnson, passed for four touchdowns and 138 yards, all in the first half. He connected on 9 of 16 passes. Two of those touchdown passes were caught by Ka’Sean Watlington. The others went to Vincent Lombardi and Anthony DeNicola, who pulled in a swing pass and took the ball 41 yards for the score.
Rob Romano ran for Bayport’s first touchdown.
It was 33-0 by halftime.
Bayport’s defense was responsible for the final touchdown in the fourth quarter. Porters quarterback Dylan Marlborough tossed the ball back in the direction of Tristin Ireland, who didn’t see it in time. But Bayport linebacker Lukas Olsson did. He scooped up the ball and took it 61 yards in the other direction for a touchdown.
The Porters (3-3) went three and out on five of their first six possessions (not including a botched punt attempt on one series) and did not pick up their first first down until the penultimate play of the first half. They managed only one other first down after that.
Bayport’s defense bottled up the Porters, holding them to negative yards on 11 plays. For the game, the Porters had minus-23 yards in offense and failed to convert a third-down or fourth-down play.
As well as Bayport played, the Porters did not play well. They made mistakes and paid a price for them.
A bad snap on a punt play in the first quarter led to a loss of 14 yards, giving Bayport the ball at the Porters’ 4-yard line. Johnson hit Watlington on a slant on the next play for a touchdown.
The Porters’ following possession ended when a punt was blocked, giving Bayport the ball at the Porters’ 5. Johnson made good use of the prime real estate, finding Lombardi for the score on the next play for a 20-0 lead.
The Porters were still without their first-string center, Kyle Schultz, who separated a shoulder in the previous game against Hampton Bays. Liam McShane started in his place.
The Porters will have a bye next week, not a minute too late, said Martilotta.
