Rye High School’s football team has been dominant all season.

 

By Melanie Cane

 

Rye High School’s football team has been dominant all season. They head into the October 11 home game against Sleepy Hollow, with whom they are tied for first place in the league, with a 5-0 record.

 

In their home opener, Rye defeated Spring Valley (non-league) 38-6. They won their first league game, 20-13, at Somers the following week. They blanked Lincoln 35-0, and then, in a showdown of titans, they humbled The Pride of Ossining, 58-14. Most recently, the Garnets scored 40 points in their shutout game at Hendrick Hudson October 4, and in so doing, handed Hendrick Hudson their fifth loss.

 

To date, the Garnets biggest game has been against Ossining, with whom they then shared a 3-0 record. In their victory, Rye looked sharp, jumping ahead to a 28-0 lead with ten minutes to go in the first half. But Rye’s defense lapsed briefly, allowing Ossining to score twice in the last five minutes of the first half on long drives. Aside from those two lapses, the Garnets defense was impenetrable, limiting The Pride to 83 yards. Rye’s quarterback, Andrew Livingston, said, “The defense was huge.” Connor Murphy agreed, adding, “Defense like that really changes the momentum of the game. The line was a big question mark at the beginning of the season, but this game established that we’ve come together as a team overall.”

 

Offensively, Rye was on fire. They scored eight touchdowns on 471 yards. Shane O’Malley rushed for 190 yards and had two touchdowns. Livingston threw for 190 yards and had one. Murphy tallied three touchdowns, and Tim DeGraw, Laz Chavez, and John Patouhas each had one TD.

 

Of the game on the whole, Livingston said the teams were well matched. “Even though we made a few mistakes — we got beaten up on the same play twice and we fumbled at the end of the game — we showed that we can block, run and pass. We executed our plays with precision. What we need to do is work on the areas where we made mistakes.”

 

— Photos by John Wood