See more photos by Chris Cecere here
By TIM IRVING
Pittsford junior quarterback Caleb Lewis set the tone on the Panthers first drive against Fairport on Thursday night.
He planned to throw the ball.
A 57-yard strike to Jackson Green kick started a 38-14 victory for Pittsford, their third straight win, improving to 5-2 on the year.
“He’s a runner, got a great arm, got great eye discipline, understand where people are supposed to be, made some checks tonight, I’ve never had a junior have that flexibility,” coach Keith Molinich said of Lewis.
The Panthers dominated the entire first quarter. Lewis found Jake LaRocca for 34 yards to set up a Nick Sanko push in from the one and a 12-0 lead.
Still in the first, Lewis found LaRocca over the middle for 16 yards and another score. He then ran in the two-point conversion for a 20-0 lead. Lewis finished the first quarter with 180 yards passing.
Pittsford’s running game was on point as well. Sanko, along with Kiar Edwards and sophomore Josiah Joyner wore out the Red Raiders defense, Joyner scoring on a 25-yard run up the middle early in the second quarter to make it a 26-0 advantage.
Sophomore quarterback Jackson Rucker started to take some shots down field and set up a one-yard touchdown by Joey Giggie to get Fairport on the board in the second quarter.
Left with little time on the clock, Lewis used a couple of short passes to Cooper Wilton and a 36 yarder to Sanko with 1.5 seconds to play in the first half to set field goal kicker Philip Noyes up with a 22-yard field goal and a 29-7 halftime lead. Lewis finished the half with 258 yards through the air.
The Panthers received the second half kickoff and marched down the field with fullback Jack Armanini scoring from two yards out. Molinich, who has had three sons play fullback at the University at Buffalo, has a fondness for that position.
“He’s always been a lineman, we finally allowed him to play fullback this year, gets his touchdown, it’s his birthday,” Molinich beamed about Armanini.
Lewis finished the game with 328 passing yards, 101 of them to Green, who is one of top junior basketball recruits in the area.
“He’s a phenomenal athlete, phenomenal student and I told him today, he’s a better young man than he is an athlete,” Molinich said of Green, who missed a couple of games with injury.
Joyner, a sophomore with a bruising running style, helped run out the clock with 105 yards rushing.
Other scores:
EASTRIDGE 32
GREECE ATHENA 40
GATES-CHILI 24
BRIGHTON 35
The Panthers finish the season with two-time defending Section V Class AA Champion McQuaid, at Sutherland.
“We had to win in order to make sure we were in that top four and we gotta go with a mindset, next week playing an incredibly strong McQuaid team, to play well and do it the right way,” Molinich said.
No mention of the Athena/ East ridge game? It was a crazy back and forth game that seen Sophomore QB Jay Rapp from Athena total 5 TD’s. 3 on the ground and 2 through the air for nearly 300 total yards to force a match-up with rival Arcadia!