Game 7 - 2013 Chenango Forks Varsity Football

Game 7 vs Chenango Valley

CF spanks CV 55-20!
45th win in a row vs a fellow Broome County team clinches 21st straight winning season!

Articles courtesy of the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin

WBNG TV 12 Highlights of CF vs CV

Chenango Forks rolls past rival CV for 20th straight time

Mike Mangan
Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin

TOWN OF CHENANGO — As the final seconds ticked off the game clock Saturday, the familiar chant of "Forks rules the Valley!" roared loud and clear from the Chenango Forks' student section.

Truer words could not have been spoken.

The Blue Devils made it 20 straight victories over rival Chenango Valley, cruising to a 55-20 home victory in a Section 4 Division III contest.

Isaiah Zimmer rushed for 162 yards and two touchdowns, and Forks (6-1, 4-0) also got a pair of touchdown runs each from Dylan Studer and Ryan Bronson in clinching the Division III title and garnering a home semifinal game in the Section 4 Class B playoffs two weeks from now.

Last year, the teams played a thriller at CV, one in which the Blue Devils prevailed in double-overtime, 15-13. This one was essentially over by halftime, as Forks scored 28 second-quarter points en route to a 34-14 lead.

"It felt great," said Zimmer, who had touchdown runs of 27 and 13 yards. "All week we said 'Don't make it as close as last year.'

"Last year shouldn't have happened. We came out and made a statement with this game."

Forks nearly doubled CV's offensive yardage, tallying 443 yards — including 370 on the ground — to the Warriors' 238. The Blue Devils also intercepted three Bryan Pert passes.

Yet, early in the second quarter, it was still very much a ballgame.

Though Forks had largely dominated play through the first quarter and change, CV (4-3, 2-1) drew within 12-7 on a 58-yard touchdown pass from Pert to Gavin Ashman with 8:48 remaining in the second quarter, Ashman making a leaping grab at the Forks' 40 before outracing a defender into the end zone.

Then, following a 10-yard loss on first down and a John Colm Sweeney incompletion, CV's defense had Forks in a third-and-20 at the Blue Devils' 10-yard line. A defensive stop, and CV would have likely had good field position on its ensuing drive with a chance to take the lead.

Instead, Zimmer took a pitch to the right from Sweeney, ran toward the Forks' sideline before making a quick cut inside to break into the clear for a 64-yard run to the CV 26. Two plays later, Studer ran it in from 22 yards out, diving into the end zone near the right pylon for a 20-7 lead.

"That was a very big play," Forks coach Dave Hogan said of Zimmer's run. "I actually thought about changing the play, but we stuck with it.

"What a cutback by Isaiah, we got some blocks but Isaiah's cutback was very nice."

It was essentially all downhill for CV after that. After the Warriors failed to pick up a first down on its next drive, a botched fake punt attempt resulted in a 13-yard loss, setting up Forks at the CV 13.

On the next play, Sweeney hooked up with Scott Craver for a 13-yard touchdown pass to put Forks ahead 27-7 with 4:53 remaining in the second quarter.

Pert tossed the first of his three interceptions on CV's next drive, Cody Lamond returning the pick 15 yards to CV's 18. Two plays later, Zimmer scored on a 13-yard run to put Forks ahead 34-7 with 2:33 remaining.

CV briefly stopped the bleeding when Pert tossed a 67-yard touchdown pass to Harold Jones with just over a minute left in the second quarter to get within 34-14. But Pert was intercepted on CV's opening drive of the second half and Forks followed with three straight scoring drives with Bronson scoring on touchdown runs of 11 and 3 yards and Studer on a 41-yard run to make it 55-14.

"They're very good, that's the bottom line," CV coach Jay Hope said. "They're good at what they do and they execute well, their kids are very physical and well-prepared.

"I think we had some individual matchups that were tough. Overall, they were just better than us (Saturday)."

Forks scored on its opening drive, thanks to a heavy dose of Zimmer.

He lugged the ball on six of Forks' seven plays on the 63-yard trek, the last of those a 27-yard run to the outside and into the end zone to make it 6-0 just over three minutes into play.

Forks then turned to the pass for its second score early in the second quarter. A 20-yard pass from Sweeney to L.J. Watson on third-and-6 put Forks at the CV 26, and two plays later Sweeney hit a wide-open Andrew Ziegenfus in the end zone on a well-executed play-action fake for a 24-yard touchdown to make it 12-0 with 10:05 left.

"I'm very, very happy," Hogan said. "Other than a couple of big plays, which we knew (CV) had that potential, we were pleased with the way we played offensively, defensively, and on special teams."

Commentary: Rivals' storied pasts may be history in Valley

Kevin Stevens
Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin

TOWN OF CHENANGO — The least-sincere, most-ironic chant cooked up by "Forks Nation" became audible with 2:52 remaining in Saturday's tail-kickin'.

Following the lead of bare-chested, blue-painted front men, members of Chenango Forks' student section fired the following cross-field at their not-so-BFF's from the other side of the river: "Good Luck Next Year! Good Luck Next Year!"

Scoring was complete in this latest renewal of a football rivalry devoid of balance, with 55-20 fairly well depicting the difference between the two, and perhaps the difference between one side fully expecting to win and the other hopeful of doing so.

Unfathomably, Saturday's outcome made for 20 consecutive Blue Devils victories in this series. Last time CV bested Forks on the football field, a gallon of gasoline went for $1.11 and Sheryl Crow accepted the Grammy for Best New Artist.

Thing is, 1994 could go down as The Final time CV bested Forks on the football field, depending on how and where chips drop regarding a proposed merger of the respective school districts.

Just maybe, the days of "Us" versus "Them" will soon be behind Forks and CV, which for athletic purposes could be united as the Chenango Pride or Chenango RiverCats — or whatever — as the combined forces suit up and take on new rival Fill-In-The-Blank.

But, for 2 hours and 12 minutes Saturday afternoon, that contentious matter was mostly set aside while teenagers enthusiastically walloped one another on the artificial surface at Forks.

So eager were one and all for this one to commence, kickoff for the scheduled 1:30 contest was sent airborne at 1:27. A stiff breeze that had flagsticks-a-leaning at Chenango Commons made 60-ish feel a tad cooler once sunshine ducked away for keeps.

Hopes for a classic, for something along the lines of last autumn's two-overtime, two-point escape by Forks on CV's grass, actually hung around for awhile. A scant five points separated the teams as Forks faced third-and-20 from its 10-yard line four minutes into the second quarter.

But then, Forks did what Forks does, what Forks has done for just about the entirety of this century, what has made Chenango Forks the gold standard of sustained excellence in Section 4 football. The Blue Devils have had it going on since their present seniors displayed super heroes on their lunch boxes.

In a four-minute span of perfectly one-sided football, Forks rattled off 22 successive points against a CV squad with wheels spinning in muck. The difference was 34-7 with 2½ minutes to play in the first half.

How important to keep intact this streak against the neighboring Warriors?

"Oh, it's very important," said Forks junior Ryan Bronson, one of many two-way standouts wearing blue on Saturday. "It's a division rival so that's always big. It's Valley and there was the 19-game thing, so … Most important thing though was getting the division."

Bronson also shared words of encouragement uttered pre-game by team captains: "You don't want to be the team that's remembered because the team that's remembered is going to be the team that lost."

As for the possibility of finality with regard to Forks vs. CV football?

"Yeah, that was definitely more motivation for us," quarterback John Colm Sweeney said. "This could be the last time we play them at all, and for us as seniors, the last time playing CV and last time being on this field was definitely more motivation."

A part of the future of Forks football — or, Who knows? Maybe the combined forces' football — spent unplanned time sidelined with a leg propped up on his Mom's lap.

Freshman L.J. Watson had the makings of a whale of a football game going on before he succumbed to the latest tweak of an ankle ailment. He hit the deck and stayed there on the tail end of a 17-yard rush three plays into the second half.

Watson on the turf was Doc Nash's cue to strut his sprinter's stuff from one sideline to the other to tend to the lad. Doc's still got some quicks, to be sure.

Isaiah Zimmer was his customarily dependable and productive and game-changing self for Forks, with touchdown rushes of 27 and 13 yards book-ending the hosts' path to that 34-7 advantage.

In the other-colored jerseys, no individual stood out more than Ben Daniels, 6 feet, 4 inches and 280 pounds worth of junior tackle whose combination of strength, agility, mobility and know-how made jersey No. 77 one that'll be remembered and game-planned against.

"I told Ben on the way in, I thought that was the best game that he's ever played," CV coach Jay Hope said. "Defensively I thought he played very well, and we ran behind him a lot (at OT)."

Hope, to his credit, doffed his cap Forks' way with regard to all that has gone into the Blue Devils' 135-15 record from 2001 through the present.

"They certainly have made us better over the years, just us trying to aspire to beat them or if they're in our division and we have to go through them, it's made us better as a program," he said.

"But they're pretty amazing in terms of the longevity of the way they've kind of kept their program going. They just keep reloading and they keep doing it the same way year after year and that's impressive."