GRAY – Oh, mercy.

Mountain Valley High School rewrote the book on compassion Friday night. If the Falcons’ traditional offense is ice cream, they fed Gray-New Gloucester sugar free vanilla frozen yogurt with one of those paddle-shaped, miniature wooden spoons for most of the evening.

Running time, arch-conservative play calling and liberal use of virtually its entire 67-man roster helped Mountain Valley contain the carnage to a genteel 68-8 bottom line in its Campbell Conference opener.

“I hope people realize that we only played our starters for 14 minutes,” said Mountain Valley coach Jim Aylward.

Seniors Justin Staires and Matt Laubauskas will put up staggering numbers against weightier competition. What’s problematic for the newer, second-tier programs in Western Class B is that the Falcons’ reserves, JVs and freshmen could start for most of them.

Seventeen different players rushed or caught the ball at least once for Mountain Valley. Seven of them scored a touchdown.

“That’s good. It shows us what we’ve got coming up,” Laubauskas said.

Of course, what the Falcons flaunt in the here-and-now is what makes them an early favorite to win their third state and fourth regional title in the last five years.

Staires maximized his streamlined minutes, rushing for 83 yards and two touchdowns, one each while lined up at quarterback and halfback. The 220-pound tank also returned an interception 70 yards for a score and set up another TD with a fumble recovery.

“It’s going to be a good year. We’re going to try and do a lot of different things,” Staires said. “We have a lot of different skill (position) players who know what they’re doing.”

Laubauskas and John Gorham combined for 79 yards and three touchdowns. Tom Puiia, Josh Allen and Chris Day each found the end zone on the ground.

Sophomore quarterback Cameron Kaubris and Travis Ruff hooked up for a 27-yard TD through the air.

Gray-New Gloucester completed only 2-of-16 passes out of its spread offense in the first half. With the exception of two early punts, the Patriots also tried and failed to convert every fourth down deep in their own territory.

That added up to a 60-0 halftime disparity, even with the Falcons making every effort to dilute their attack.

“We were real dead at the start,” Laubauskas said. “Against a good team we can’t be doing that.”

Efficiency is in the eye of the beholder. Mountain Valley held G-NG to eight total yards in the first half.

Taylor Bradley picked off the Patriots’ Heath Martell to stifle a potential scoring drive in the third quarter. Martell later put a smiley-face on the night for the Patriots, hitting Taylor Valente for a 45-yard scoring strike with 4:25 left.

Crooked number in the opposing column or not, the Falcons’ final result was every bit as convincing as their 66-0 opening-night win over G-NG last summer.

“We approach it like any other game,” Staires said. “We practiced even harder than normal. We did a lot more conditioning this week. It’s the first game, so we wanted to be in top shape.”