Lance Meader runs for 170 yards and four touchdowns to lead the Cougars to a 40-0 rout.
By Kevin Mills
Staff Writer

OAKLAND – It’s safe to say that there was a sense of urgency in practice this week for the Mt. Blue football team.

After losing to Bangor a week ago, the Cougars felt they were better than a 1-2 team and didn’t want to be 1-3.

“It was pretty intense,” said running back Lance Meader. “We took it up a notch. We knew we had to come back. We weren’t a 1-2 team. We were more than that.”

Friday night, the Cougars showed it in a convincing 40-0 win over Messalonskee.

“This is huge,” said Meader, who led Mt. Blue with 170 yards on 22 carries and four touchdowns. “It gets us back on track. We can’t let down though. We’ve got a lot more work to do.”

The Cougars (2-2) dominated in the first half, building a 22-0 lead. Mt. Blue outdistanced the Eagles 243 to 59 yards. Mt. Blue had 135 yards on the ground and 108 in the air.

“We tried to be balanced last week,” said Mt. Blue coach Gary Parlin. “Last week, we only ran 37 plays and that’s the lowest I remember ever running. We could never get anything going with our offense.”

Friday, the Cougars moved the ball right away and scored just three plays into the game. Quarterback Garrett Lake hit Pete Tinguely on a short pass to the left flank. Tinguely cut back through the middle, broke a few tackles and scampered 43 yards for the score.

Mt. Blue nearly scored again on its next try. The Cougars got as close as the one yard line, but were stuffed there. The Cougars got the ball back soon enough and used four plays to make it 15-0. Meader ran behind a Callahan Miller block and took it in from the 28 with 7:02 left. Ben Sinclair hit Nate Bolduc on the conversion.

“It’s good to get our running game going,” said Parlin. “Lance Meader is a tough back with a good line in front of him. We were going to run a little more wide stuff but our power game was working. We tried to stay balanced.”

Meader added another score with 3:33 left in the first half, bursting up the middle from two yards out for a 22-0 lead. Derek Taber had some nice yardage in the opening half as well, gaining 44 yards on nine carries.

As impressive as the offense was in the opening half, the Cougars defense was equally dominant. Messalonskee managed just 59 yards on the ground and four first downs.

“We got killed on counters last week,” said Parlin. “We had guys flying to the football but not doing their assignments first. Tonight, the first few times they ran counters, we stopped it and got them out of that a little bit.”

Meader added two more touchdowns in the third quarter and Russell Hoyt added a 2-yard run.

“We worked last week really hard in practice,” said Meader. “We knew we had to pick it up a notch. The offensive line worked hard all week and came out here and kicked some butt. The offensive line and the defensive line both really dominated.”