Sprint Football: Late-game touchdowns not enough to overcome Quakers

With a new season that begins with four consecutive home games and includes an all-new opponent (Post University), the sprint football team is looking toward a fresh start.

“We think we can get a couple wins before the year’s over, and that’s what we’re driving at,” head coach Thomas Cocuzza said. “After the last couple years it’d be easy to say, ‘OK, the game’s close’ and call that a success, but we’re looking at it to get a couple of wins.”

Under beautiful weather and minimal breeze, the Tigers’ season opened with a 48-12 loss to Penn on Friday, a significant improvement over their 91-13 loss last season.

“I thought we played well considering the amount of players we had. I thought the guys played extremely hard. And to be fair to the game, I think we played a lot better than we did last year,” Cocuzza said.

In the first quarter, Penn (1-0) quickly took possession of the game with a decisive three-touchdown scoring streak against Princeton (0-1), including a last-minute play with only 30 seconds left in the quarter.

After a rough start — partially due to losing a number of players to injuries and the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur — Princeton’s defense regrouped and held Penn scoreless in the second quarter. The thin lineup is something the Tigers hope to overcome in the coming weeks with the help of fresh recruits.

“With school starting so late ... we didn’t have a lot of the freshmen, so we’re still recruiting as we speak,” Cocuzza said.

In the third quarter, senior linebacker Andrew Gabriele scored Princeton’s first touchdown on an inside running play by eluding Penn’s defense and sprinting toward the end zone.

Sophomore wide receiver Kees Thompson and starting sophomore quarterback Jaison Zachariah teamed for Princeton’s next score in the fourth quarter. Zachariah hit Thompson on a quick route before Thompson deftly eluded his defender and stormed down the sideline for a 75-yard touchdown.

Despite their two big-play touchdowns, the Tigers were unable to overcome the Quakers’ large head start and lost their momentum in small but key plays.

“We got down to the 1-yard line and then we made a couple of mistakes and we didn’t score and we gave a couple of big plays to Penn’s offense,” Cocuzza said.

Off the field, the team is kicking up its conditioning training for the season since many players are playing both offensive and defensive positions. For some players, the extra work is paying off.

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“Ned Moffat, a sophomore, played really well. Mike Howard, another sophomore, played really well. So did Atraya Dixit, who’s a junior,” Cocuzza said.

“I suspect Atraya will be a captain next year, and probably one or two sophomores may be a captain,” he added.

At the end of the day, with over half the roster made up of sophomores, the team is looking toward having a large advantage in growth over the next three years as players have more opportunities to start.

“I’m going to blame the poor start to our alumni. We played them on Sunday in our annual alumni game, and I think they were so slow and so old,” Cocuzza joked. “We had some really great alumni come back, but there’s just a big difference between somebody who’s in college and has been practicing for three weeks and somebody who decided that he was going to play on a Sunday morning and have a few beers.”

Princeton’s next game is against Cornell on Friday at Princeton Stadium.