ROCKPORT — Camden Hills celebrated the return of high school football to the region with its first official home varsity game in 76 years Saturday. Then Leavitt officially welcomed the Windjammers into the Pine Tree Conference.

Jon Letourneau scored four touchdowns, two rushing and two receiving, and Jordan Hersom added three scores as Leavitt rolled to a 62-14 victory.

Letourneau, a senior slotback, scored on a pair of two-yard runs and caught five passes for 136 yards, including touchdown tosses of 52 and 11 yards from senior QB Eric Theiss (11-for-17, 246 yards, two TDs).

“We kind of knew what was coming beforehand (in terms of pass coverage), but it really opened up,” Letourneau said. “We had a lot of pass protection. The line really gave a lot of time for our quarterback to seek it out.”

“We knew they were going to play three-deep in the secondary, so we went to work on that this week and they carried out the game plan pretty well,” Leavitt coach Mike Hathaway said. “There were some holes in there and they found them.”

Playing without starting tailback Josh Strickland (sore hamstring) for most of the game, Leavitt (2-0) didn’t miss a beat on offense, rolling up 478 yards of total offense. The Hornets scored on four of five first half possessions but squandered some of their early success by fumbling to open the second half. That allowed the Windjammers (0-2) to drive 32 yards on just two plays, with Jacob Powers scoring a two-yard TD to make it 24-6.

“We moved the ball in spurts,” Camden Hills coach Linwood Downs
said.”We didn’t put together a series of plays. They’re a great team.
They’re well-coached and play hard. They’re the real deal. We’re just
trying to play as well as we can and get better play by play.” 

The Hornets responded to the Jammers’ quick strike by scoring 38 unanswered points, 30 of those coming in the third quarter.

“We’ve got guys like Matt Pellerin, Mat Porter, Luke Wiley up front and Eric in the backfield and Jon and Isaiah (Wright), those guys have been around a while,” Hathaway said. “We’ve been in those situations before. We were in one last week against Hampden (an overtime win). We certainly didn’t start the half the way we wanted to, but those guys responded well.”

A 33-yard pass from Theiss to Letourneau was the key play of the Hornets’ first drive after Camden’s score. Letourneau plunged in for his second touchdown after that to make it 31-6.

Zach Frost recovered a fumble at the Windjammers’ 25 two plays into their next drive. Letourneau hooked up with Theiss three plays later for an 11-yard touchdown.

Leavitt’s defense kept the pressure on. Following a false start penalty, back-to-back sacks by Pellerin and Jesse Pelletier pushed the Jammers into a 3rd-and-26 from their own 11 and knocked starting QB Collin Downs out of the game for one play. Porter made the most of that one play by chasing backup QB Adam Landwehr into the end zone for another sack and a safety that made it 40-6. Leavitt received a free kick at its own 45 and scored again in just five plays on a three-yard Hersom run.

Hersom (7 carries, 97 yards) added a six yard TD run and Tyson Nichols scored on an 11-yard run to close out the scoring for Leavitt.

Hersom opened the scoring with a 30-yard TD run on the Hornets first possession. Letourneau found paydirt on the ground and through the air on the Hornets’ next two drives, and Nick Urquhart added a 20-yard field goal to give the Hornets a 24-0 cushion at halftime.

“We’d run trap, trap and then call a trap pass and their safety would bite and it would be open every time,” Letourneau said.