No offense to Connor, but the way the Leavitt offensive line blocked and the way Jordan Hersom distributed the ball Friday night, the Tigers’ star might have been the fourth-best back at Libby Field.

Jake Ouellette and Ian Durgin each scored three touchdowns and undefeated Leavitt piled up 516 total yards in a 41-6 rout.

Leavitt (8-0) won its 30th straight game against Eastern B competition and captured the Pine Tree Conference regular-season championship for the fourth consecutive year. Home field again belongs to the Hornets throughout the regional playoffs.

“My whole career so far I’ve never lost to Gardiner,” senior two-way lineman Jake Posik said. “It’s just good to come out here and lay one on them like that. That’s really what we wanted to do.”

Posik and fellow senior Jack Griffin combined to sack Gardiner quarterback Dennis Meehan four times in the first half. And the Hornets’ offensive line of Posik, Griffin, Devin McMahan, Matt Powell, Tom Langelier and tight end Brandon MacDonald ripped open caverns at the point of attack all night.

When Ouellette (18 carries, 140 yards) wasn’t dragging multiple Tiger tacklers up the middle, Durgin (six carries for 97) was collecting chunks with the counter play or Hersom (10 for 82) was bootlegging his way to big gains.

“All the line played fantastic on both sides,” Langelier said. “We just held our blocks, read our keys, made adjustments, and it all worked out great.”

After a scoreless first quarter, Durgin delivered a 31-yard touchdown on the opening play of the second period.

Ouellette pounded out TD runs of 6 and 9 yards for a 21-0 halftime lead, and the rout was on after his 26-yard scoring surge to cap the initial drive of the second half.

“We just thought misdirection was going to hurt them, so we tried to come out and give them a heavy dose of it,” Leavitt coach Mike Hathaway said. “Then I thought we were able to run at them for a while. It all came down to the O-line. Those guys blocked their tails off the whole game.”

Gardiner (6-2) found few drives more frustrating than Leavitt’s second next scoring march.

An illegal block on a punt return and three holding penalties during the drive set Leavitt back 45 yards. But the Hornets still covered 78 yards in 10 plays and found the end zone.

Hersom hit Brian Bedard on a slant to convert third-and-23 from the 9. Later in the series, he cranked out a 37-yard keeper on third-and-1.

Finally, on fourth-and-12 from the Gardiner 17, Hersom (5-for-8, 116 yards) found Durgin mid-stride on a post pattern for the score.

“Jordan was pretty good on third down on that drive,” said Hathaway, who celebrated his 100th game as Leavitt’s coach with his 72nd career win.

Durgin’s dynamics on the first play of quarters continued in the fourth, when he broke free and grabbed a 46-yard Hersom strike for another TD.

Connor finished with 31 carries for 121 yards, but nearly half that total came at the expense of Leavitt’s second unit in the fourth quarter.

His 10-yard score broke the shutout with 4:39 left.

“We did the same thing to (Mt. Blue’s Izaiha) Tracy. We’re real stout,” Posik said. “That’s how we’ve been coached, and that’s how we play.”

Meehan was 10-for-20 through the air for 111 yards, 86 of those to Justin Lovely.

Langelier recovered a Meehan fumble after a Griffin sack to set up Leavitt’s final touchdown of the first half. Josh Faunce added a fourth-quarter interception.

“We knew in the preseason that the big ‘X’ on the calendar was Mt. Blue, and we knew the next big ‘X’ was this one,” Posik said. “To do both of them my senior year is just incredible.”

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