WINTHROP — Nineteen strong, the Traip Academy football team might have made you feel sympathy if you arrived at Maxwell Field early enough Friday to watch the Rangers roll in from their 100-mile, one-way bus ride.

A few hours later, if you were shedding any tears, you weren’t paying attention.

Traip carved up Winthrop for 463 yards and extended its season-opening shutout streak to eight quarters in a 35-0 rout.

“That’s two in a row. Hopefully we get three in a row, four, five, six,” Traip coach Ron Ross said. “We pride ourselves on defense. It just so happens we’re good on offense too. Until somebody can stop what we do, we’ll do what we do and that’s drive the ball.”

With the exception of each half, when Traip (2-0) had the ball as the clock ran out, every Rangers possession ended with a touchdown.

Devon Draker dragged well-intentioned tacklers all night for 109 yards on 14 carries and two scores. Cory Aldecoa had 16 rushes for 119 yards, both game highs, and a TD.

Quarterback Chris Czachor and Matt Graham also had 1-yard scoring rushes for Traip.

“We like to grind it out on the field. That’s just Traip football. We talk with our pads and not our mouths,” Aldecoa said. “It’s straight-up, iron-man football. You’ve got to show up to practice. You have to want to improve because we don’t have the substitutes like all the other teams.”

Traip produced 20 of its 21 first downs and 411 of its yards on the ground behind the experienced line of Dan Eddy, Joe Harty, Nick Ovington, Tucker Gray and Ben Castellano, averaging 250 pounds.

“That’s what we’ll do until next year when we’ve got to find five more linemen that want to come in and work out and be like those guys,” Ross said. “We have some speed and we have some power, but if we can win with the strength without having to show all the speed, that’s fine too.”

The size and strength goes both ways for Traip, and it almost completely dissuaded Winthrop (1-1) from trying to run the ball.

Every first-half play for the Ramblers was either a pass or a quarterback keeper by Jared Hanson.

Winthrop lost Zach Glazier to an injury. He didn’t make a single rushing attempt. Dan Moody carried the ball only twice, both on the opening drive of the second half.

“We felt we could throw on them. We just couldn’t sustain the drives doing it. We didn’t feel we had a good match-up up front. Their defensive front is arguably the best in the conference,” Winthrop coach Joel Stoneton said. “Their weakness is covering the pass, and we just couldn’t take advantage of it.”

Hanson was 9-for-20 for 77 yards. Traip’s Nick Henderson had two interceptions on balls that fell shy of the target.

Traip drove 13 and 11 plays to its first two scores.

Cam Cavanaugh blocked a Mario Meucci punt early in the second quarter. Draker barreled in from a yard out on the next play, and Christian Montembeau’s extra-point made it a 21-0 halftime lead.

The Rangers built that cushion despite 14 first-half penalties. They wound up with a 18 for a staggering 150 yards.

“I can’t get fined can I? Every time we come here, we’ve got to play the refs. We have to play the fans,” Ross said. “Those calls? I can’t believe half of them. Nobody knows who we are up here. We’re Traip Academy. We’re from Kittery. If you want to go shopping that’s where you go. You don’t go there to play football. We have to play more than a football game.”

Cavanaugh and Castellano each had a sack for the Rangers, who limited the Ramblers to 102 total yards.

“They run right over you. They run power-I and they run five guys at you,” Stoneton said. “They’re a tough team. Speed worked, but it didn’t work enough.”

koakes@sunjournal.com

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