The Cranston West football team had championship aspirations heading into this season and hit its first bump in the road when it took two straight defeats, losing to St. Ray’s then Cumberland to fall to 2-2.
The Falcons needed an answer and would get one last Thursday, beating visiting unbeaten South Kingstown, 27-21.
West quarterback Kelan Cornell connected with wide receiver Charlie Cornell for three touchdown strikes in the first half to give the Falcons the lead at the break. SK started the game by scoring a touchdown on a long drive in the first quarter, but the Cornell’s connected on the ensuing drive and then would pull off touchdown passes of 51 and 86 yards in the second to make it 21-7.
“This is something we work on every day. He trusts me and I trust him. The mindset against a good team like this is to run up the scoreboard and keep passing it. It was a great win with a great crowd at home,” said Charlie Cornell, who finished the day with 168 yards as well.
“That’s all because of him. That’s the best receiver in the state. We’re just going to keep throwing shots to him to get him the ball,” added Kelan of his brother. “We just wanted to get back on track and take care of business. That’s a great team and we had to handle business. SK is a great team, I just tried to get the ball to my brother more and get back on track toward the end goal.”
The Rebels pulled within a score in the third quarter, but Kelan Cornell rushed for a touchdown of his own to give West the 27-14 lead heading into the fourth.
SK managed to score one more rushing touchdown and then get a stop on defense to earn one final drive with less than three minutes left in regulation. Although the West defense struggled to slow down the SK rushing attack to that point, the Falcons would step up at the right time to come up with some stops and force the Rebels to try to air it out. SK fell short and the Falcons made one final stand at midfield to walk out with the victory.
“We knew what we had to do. We let up those touchdowns, but we knew that our game plan was to go in and make them pass because that’s not what they do. We shut down the running game and made them rely on their weak spot,” said West defensive captain Adrian Samayoa.
The Falcons improved to 3-2, but their schedule will not ease up the rest of the way. West will be traveling to Barrington this Friday before heading to Central the next week. The team will close out the regular season hosting La Salle.
Samayoa and the Falcons were happy to stop the bleeding and gear up for one last push toward the postseason.
“(SK) brought it tonight. We knew we had to get back in that win column. It’s very important, especially in DI. We’ve just got to work 10 times harder to get to where we need to be,” Samayoa said. “We had to find ourselves again. This week we buckled in and we realized that we didn’t play our game. What we did tonight is the West way.”