CLYMER — Try as it might, the Franklinville/Ellicottville football team never found a way to stop Clymer/Sherman/Panama receiver Bryce Hinsdale on Saturday.
And on the occasions the Titans pushed the Wolfpack to fourth down, they then had to worry about Hinsdale’s leg.
Hinsdale had a monster performance to spark the Wolfpack offense — grabbing 17 catches for 145 yards and two touchdowns — but his special teams contributions proved to be as much of a difference as he made three field goals and an extra point. After making kicks from 34 and 37 yards out earlier in the contest, Hinsdale’s 22-yard field goal as time expired gave CSP a walk-off victory, 22-20, in a matchup of two of Section 6 Class D’s best.
The game saw six lead changes. The Titans drove to take a 20-19 lead on a 35-yard touchdown run by quarterback Gian Nuzzo with just 4:54 remaining, but CSP strung together a 12-play, 64-yard drive to drain the clock and set up the winning kick.
“We’re definitely happy with the effort,” F/E coach Jason Marsh said. “We had a few opportunities to get off the field and they made their plays and we didn’t. They came up with the plays when they needed to and we’re going to work on that and work to get better from it.”
CSP quarterback Tate Catanese went 21-for-35 for 245 yards, two touchdowns and an interception that F/E’s Noah Shenk returned for the opening touchdown on the third play of the game. Catanese also led CSP’s rushing attack with 14 carries for 55 yards.
“I don’t know a Class D quarterback-wide receiver combination, I haven’t seen it in a while that I can remember (like that),” Marsh said. “Today, that was an impressive performance from those two guys, 14 (Catanese) and No. 1 (Hinsdale, a sophomore). They were amazing, they were connected all day, and we’re going to have to definitely, if we see them again, we’ve got to come up with something. They had a great performance. I thought our kids played super hard, we were able to answer and respond after half. We’ve just got to make one more play in there somewhere.”
Nuzzo carried the ball 21 times for 123 yards and a touchdown while running back Hunter Smith had six carries for 89 yards, including a 40-yard third-quarter touchdown. He also made a 21-yard catch, F/E’s longest pass play.
Smith made a team-high 8.5 tackles (one for loss). Isaac Towne made six tackles, including a sack, and Ben Brol had two tackles for loss and five total tackles.
CSP went 7-of-16 on third down and 3-of-3 on fourth down conversions.
“We had our opportunities to get off the field and we couldn’t, so we’ve got to get better, we’ve got to step up, we’ve got to make plays,” Marsh said.
While Catanese looked to Hinsdale on most of his dropbacks, it was another sophomore, Alex Barmore, who made the game-winning drive’s biggest play, a 32-yard catch to the F/E 9 with just over a minute to play.
“We felt like anything to the 20 and in, we feel pretty good about Bryce,” coach Ty Harper said of CSP’s field goal range. “A touchdown is ideal in that situation, and we had first and goal after that incredible play that Barmore made. So ideally we wanted to punch it in there, but also you’re thinking we don’t want to throw it away.
“I think we got kind of conservative down there, which is fine, it worked out. But once we got inside the 10-yard line we just didn’t want to screw it up for Bryce.”
Shenk’s pick-six — his Section 6-leading seventh interception of the year — gave F/E the early lead. Harper blamed his own play-calling for the early error.
“That first throw that got intercepted was probably more my fault than anything. I had him throw a ‘go’ into the wind, just stupid,” Harper admitted. “I thought he did a great job of distributing the ball and taking what the defense gave him today.”
F/E could have all but clinched the No. 2 seed in Class D with a win. Instead, it will wait for Week 8 to settle any tiebreakers.
F/E (5-2, 4-2) wraps up its league and regular season schedule with a Friday trip to Cattaraugus-Little Valley, where a win would tie the Titans with CSP. Portville, currently alone in second place, will try to upset undefeated first-place Randolph in Week 8 and could either leapfrog the Cardinals or drop to a potential three-way tie with F/E and CSP.
The three games between Portville, F/E and CSP were all decided by one score: 8, 6 or 2 points. Harper said he expects a close game if his team faces either F/E or Portville again.
“These are games that you’re not going to blow these guys out,” Harper said. “They’re well-coached, they’ve got great players. Portville came down and beat us at our place on Homecoming and that was a tough pill to swallow.
“But they’ve got a great team, they’re having a great season. F/E, we’ve had these crazy close contests for I feel like as long as we’ve been merged. And they’re super well-coached. So I’m sure we’ll see one if not both of them again and it’ll probably be two more great games.”
