LYNN — Milton High School football coach Steve Dembowski grew up in Swampscott, played his football for the Big Blue, and coached the team to a Super Bowl victory.
Now, Dembowski is on the South Shore, and there’s nothing like Manning Field, Lynn football, or the city’s historic legacy down there. He wanted his players to get a taste of it, and play a competitive program such as Lynn Classical in the process.
However, the Rams were no match for the Wildcats Friday night, as Milton came in and clubbed Classical, 47-8, with all by one series in the second half played in running time.
“We have to do better,” said Classical coach Brian Vaughan. “We have to play better and coach better. We’re at a point where we beat the teams we’re supposed to beat, and lose to the ones we’re not supposed to beat.”
Classical falls to 4-3 with the loss, with next week’s game against Revere being the regular-season finale before tournament pairings are announced.
Friday, it was a case of Milton being just a little too much for Classical to handle. Even though the Wildcats are two divisions lower than the Rams, they are ranked 16th in the state in various polls. All three of Classicals losses have come against ranked teams (the other two being against Everett and Marblehead).
The Wildcats had to endure a long, traffic-filled bus ride to Lynn, and Dembowski thought it may have been a reason why — in his eyes — the team started sluggish. He’d get an argument from Vaughan, whom he faced both in high school, when the Classical coach played for English, and later, in college when he was at UMass-Amherst and Vaughan was at Northeastern.
Classical could not move the ball to start, and once Milton got the ball back, it took three plays for the Wildcats to score — on a 63-yard strike from Chase Vaughan to Luke Sammon. That was the start of a stellar night for Vaughan. He scored a touchdown rushing and threw for three more in only two quarters of play. Classical fumbled on the ensuing kickoff, leading to another Milton score — this one a 7-yard run by Amari Marsman.
Milton scored every time it had the ball up to the first play of the second half, by which time Dembowski had his underclassmen on the field.
However, the Rams never stopped playing. Finally, late in the game, quarterback Brian Vaughan, son of the coach, started finding some holes in the Wildcat defense, and led the Rams up the field on a 90-yard drive. He was rewarded for his efforts with a 10-yard touchdown run, and then hit Kyle Durant with the conversion pass.
“He’s been playing quarterback for not even a whole season,” said his father. “He’s done all right.”