Sprint Football: Squad suffers worst loss of season to rival Quakers, giving up more than 600 yards

The sprint football team was shut out for a third straight game on Friday in its final game of the season, this time by Penn. The Quaker offense dominated the Tigers (0-7 overall, 0-5 Collegiate Sprint Football League) in a 70-0 win in which the Quakers (6-1, 4-1) scored touchdowns on 10 of their 13 possessions.

With the victory, Penn joined Army as CSFL co-champion, earning its fourth-ever league title. The Quakers also beat out Princeton and Cornell for the William R. Wagner trophy for the sixth time. The trophy is awarded to the Ivy League team with the best record in the CSFL. This game was characterized by multiple broken records and trophies for Penn and disappointment and frustration for Princeton.

The Tigers struggled to create offensive opportunities throughout the game and turned the ball over six times in their worst loss of the year. Sophomore quarterback Jaison Zachariah completed a season-high 15 passes for 150 yards, but he also threw a season-high four interceptions. The Tigers did not get into the red zone until midway through the fourth quarter, only to turn the ball over on downs.

The lone bright spot for the Tiger offense was junior running back Kevin Infante. In his third game back from a concussion, Infante ran for 46 yards on nine carries, averaging 5.1 yards per carry, his best since returning to the field from injury.

While Princeton could not get anything going on the offensive end, it also struggled on defense and allowed the Quakers to score again and again. The Tigers gave up a season-high 632 yards of total offense and a season-high 10 touchdowns. Running back Mike Bagnoli provided the firepower for Penn’s offense, running for a career-high 268 yards and tacking on four touchdowns, two of which were more than 50-yard rushes.

The Quakers scored three touchdowns through the air as well, the most important of which was a 60-yard pass to wide receiver Whit Shaw midway through the second quarter. With that play, Shaw became Penn’s all-time leading receiver with two years left in his career.

The overall lackluster performance was much of the same for the Tigers, who have lost their last three games by a combined score of 192-0. In the first half of the season, the Tigers almost came away with a few wins and seemed to be improving on both offense and defense, but the season has certainly taken a turn for the worse. In these two teams’ first meeting of the year on Sept. 17 at Princeton, the Tigers lost to the Quakers 48-12.

“Penn has a good football team, and they beat us good, but they aren’t 70 points better than us,” senior offensive lineman and co-captain Adrian Colarusso said. “It has been a frustrating second half of the season for us, especially after showing so much promise in the beginning of the year.”

This was the last game for Princeton’s five seniors, all of whom will graduate winless in their careers. Nonetheless, the seniors have hope that next year’s team will finally pull off a win.

“I think that next season, as our strong Class of 2013 gets more experience, the program is poised to get its first win in a while,” Colarusso said. “I personally have put a ton of heart into the program for the past four years, but I’ll know it wasn’t for nothing if our sophomores get their win.”