By G. Spencer Osborne

PITTSFIELD — Wahconah Park was the site for the Lee High varsity football team’s first road contest of the 2008 campaign, and the winless Pittsfield Generals were the hosts.

After a scoreless first half in which both teams got inside the other’s 20-yard line without the success they sought, the Wildcats scored three touchdowns in a two-minute span, scored a fourth less than 2 1/2 minutes after that and generally shackled the Generals well enough to post a 26-8 victory.
 
Lee’s best first-half scoring attempt came in its first possession. Starting on the Pittsfield 48-yard line, the Wildcats marched to the Generals’ 17 in seven plays before the hosts stopped junior running back Chris Bachand for no gain on a fourth down-and-two play.
 
Pittsfield’s best first-half bid for the promised land came in the second quarter. Starting on their own 13 with only 17 seconds gone in the period, they used junior quarterback Mike Mancivalano’s passes to tight end Brandon Eason (12 yards) and tailback Kamaar Taliaferro (24 yards) as well as a critical 24-yard run by Mancivalano — that one got the purple haze close to its own 48 — to move the ball into the red zone in 10 plays.
 
But an offside penalty on a third-and-six play on the Lee 17 moved the Generals back to the Wildcats’ 21, where incomplete passes by Mancivalano and Taliaferro gave the ball back to the Wildcats on downs after a drive lasting a little more than seven minutes.
 
Breakout: Both teams saw their first possessions of the third quarter result in no satisfaction. But it was the Wildcats who were unhappiest after the end of their first drive, and here’s why.
 
Starting on their own 33, they got a 20-yard run from junior running back Peter Newton on a pitchout that would have gotten them to the Pittsfield 36, except for one thing. Because Newton was hit after going out of bounds at the play’s end, the Generals were hit with a personal foul penalty that moved the ball to the Pittsfield 18.
 
Despite junior quarterback Tanner Bachand’s being sacked for a three-yard loss that moved the guests back to the Pittsfield 21, Newton more than made up for all that with an 11-yard run that put the Wildcats at the Generals’ 10. But the next play, a third-and-two running play that saw Chris Bachand answer the call, resulted in CB’s fumble and General linebacker Anthony Castagna’s recovery on the hosts’ four.
 
But the best Pittsfield was able to do was move the ball to its own seven. Pushed back by an offsides penalty and defensive tackle Niall Daley’s three-yard sack of fullback Jared DiNicola, the Generals gave up the pigskin on a punt from their own three after Mancivalano’s two-yard run on the previous play was a narrow avoidance of a safety.
 
Once Lee special-teams artist Dalton Griffin — the junior played golf for the Wildcats in 2007 — used his 10-yard punt return to get the ball to the Pittsfield 23, the Wildcats wasted little time getting some satisfaction.
 
On the first-and-10 play, CB took a pitchout to the right side and broke into the clear before using a block from tight end Cody Schaefer between the 15- and 20-yards before cutting back to the middle third of the field and outrunning the defending Generals to the north end zone. Though Dillon Mooney’s extra-point kick was short of the mark, the Wildcats had a 6-0 lead with 5:57 left in act three.

Lee caught another break when senior linebacker Jaymes Bachand did his best impression of Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis — both wear No. 52 — by hitting Mancivalano on the Pittsfield eight on a second-and-five play and recovering the fumble on the spot.
 
With the ball in hand, the Wildcats wasted little time scoring, as CB took the ball behind center and ran over Mancivalano at the goal line for the touchdown. It barely mattered that the snap for the extra-point kick was as bungled as TB’s pass for the two-point conversion seconds later. The Wildcats had a 12-0 lead with 4:51 left in the third quarter.
 
But the Wildcats capitalized on another Pittsfield fumble seconds later. On the ensuing kickoff, Pittsfield kick returner/wingback Joe Wiggins fumbled after returning Steve Bowers’ kick 15 yards to the Generals’ 35, where Lee’s Chris Herr recovered the ball.
 
On the third play of the new drive, TB rainbowed a 30-yard touchdown pass to Bowers, who caught the ball just out of the reach of Pittsfield defensive back Eric Belknap in the left corner of the end zone at the 3:59 mark. Mooney missed the mark once again on the extra point attempt, but it didn’t detract from the fact that Lee’s lead continued growing.
 
Pittsfield’s third drive of the period was an exercise in reverse, as a tackle of running back Steven Sumpter  by Lee defenders Mike Forzano and Dan Cuevas for a four-yard loss from the Pittsfield 28 preceded the Generals’ being called for holding on a fourth-and-14 punt situation. Backed up to their own 14, the Generals punted successfully, but Griffin’s 27-yard return put the ball back on the 14.
 
From that line, it took the Wildcats just two plays to get to the promised land for the fourth time in the quarter. This time, Newton, who got the call on a second-and-nine play from the Pittsfield 13, came through with a pitch play that saw him elude most of the Generals on his way to the end zone. Seconds later on the two-point conversion attempt, Jaymes Bachand got the call to run the ball, and he came through with the successful run that inflated the guests’ lead to 26-0 with 1:59 left.
 
The last drive of the quarter, run by the Generals, was continued into the fourth quarter, but it ended with punter Mouchine Oubutru’s grab of a high snap on a fourth-and-10 punt try on the Pittsfield 25 before his five-yard run gave the ball back to Lee on downs.
 
The Wildcats short-circuited their first drive of the final 11 minutes when CB’s fumble on the Pittsfield 24 was recovered by DiNicola on the Generals’ 25. Then DiNicola ran for five yards before he was tackled.
 
From their own 30, the purples seemed destined for another drive in reverse after the first play, a Mancivalano lateral pass to Sumpter, resulted in an eight-yard loss. But back-to-back 22-yard passes from Mancivalano to Taliaferro got the ball to the Lee 34. After two more passes — a 12-yard Mancivalano-to-Taliaferro connection for 12 yards and a Mancivalano-to-Wiggins strike for 14 more — got the ball to the Lee five, DiNicola got the call and played bullback to perfection with a five-yard touchdown run. After Mancivalano’s two-point conversion run, the Wildcats’ lead was trimmed to 26-8 with 6:39 left.
 
The remainder of the game was one in which many fresh faces, mostly from the Lee bench, saw action, not the least among them John Besaw and John Kelley in the backfield and freshman Tucker Bachand at quarterback. But the Generals were kept on their half of the field in their last two posessions.
 
The closest they got to midfield was on their next-to-last series, when Mancivalano’s fourth-and-eight pass from the Pittsfield 47 was intercepted by Cuevas, who returned the ball 20 yards before lateraling to fellow defender Nick Strezynski, who gained another 17 yards before being tackled at the Pittsfield 23 with 3:22 remaining.