TURNER — The Leavitt Hornets have been so good at lighting up the scoreboard the past two weeks that even when they run the wrong play, they score.
Tyler Chicoine threw for 190 yards and four touchdowns and ran for another score as the Hornets dropped Poland, 62-0, at Libby Field Friday night.
Leavitt (4-0) followed up last week’s 52-0 rout of Gray-New Gloucester with a similarly dominant performance. The Hornets racked up 530 total yards while the defense, which hasn’t allowed a point in the past 10 quarters, allowed just 71 yards by the Knights (1-3).
“You’ve got to prepare every week like you’re playing one of the best teams. We just wanted to get better this week,” said senior slot Nate Coombs, who rushed for 69 yards on three carries and had four catches for 66 yards and two touchdowns.
The Hornets found the end zone on three of their first four possessions, starting with Adam Poulin’s seven-yard TD run on their first chance.
Coombs’ 41-yard punt return set up their next score, a 19-yard pass from Chicoine (9-for-17, two interceptions) to Sam Green in the back of the end zone that looked pretty sleek despite some confusion on the play call.
“We have two guys giving signals (from the sidelines) and I looked at the wrong guy and ran the pass play, not the run play,” Chicoine said. “I’m sure the running back that was supposed to be running the ball wasn’t very happy with me.”
The Knights had some early success moving the ball with William Adams (11 carries, 37 yards) and Adam Mocciola (nine carries, 37 yards) in their triple option. Their best drive was their second of the game, which stalled at the Hornets’ 35 when Nick Nason knocked down a pass on 4th-and-5.
“We spent a lot of time in practice with the triple option because we haven’t really seen that look yet. I thought we struggled with it a little bit the first couple of series, but I thought we got better at that as the game went along,” Leavitt coach Mike Hathaway said. “Our defense has been pretty tough.”
Mitchel Davis recovered a fumble at Poland’s 28 to set up Coombs’ first TD pass from Chicoine, a 14-yard connection that made it 21-0 at the end of the first quarter.
The Knights had a couple of opportunities to get back into the game in the second quarter with interceptions by Nick Cote and Mocciola, but they turned the ball back over on a Scott Sleeper interception.
Chicoine’s 21-yard pass to Green (three catches, 58 yards) preceded his two-yard TD run to make it 28-0.
On the Hornets’ last drive of the half, Chicoine floated a bomb down the right side that the wide-open Coombs was able to sprint under and take 46 yards to make it 35-0 with 1:46 left.
“Me and Chic really haven’t connected so far this year. I felt like we got in stride and he left it up there for me and I went and got it,” Coombs said.
“I was glad we came out and threw the ball,” Chicoine said. “We’ve been kind of struggling on a few things offensively this year and we figured it out and got it fixed today.”
In the third quarter, Chicoine added a 35-yard TD pass Nate Rousseau and Julian Kirouac a 16-yard TD run. In the fourth, Zach Rollins stripped a Poland ball-carrier and rumbled 23 yards for a touchdown and John Rousseau capped the scoring with an 11-yard run.
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