Dan Gilmore Photo

GREENE – The Trojans, Greene’s varsity football team, has emerged as a playoff team in the New York State Class D realm, after starting 1-2 has moved to a solid 4-2.

Greene’s most recent win came against the winless Oxford Blackhawks, a game which saw the Trojans seniors shine on their own homecoming and senior night, to the tune of a 43-0 home win.

“We are excited, and it felt really good for our seniors. All four of them (Coy Austin, Justin Carmen, Ty Nolan, Mitchell Walters) had big games on senior night and contributed so they’re going to have good memories about what happened here and they’ll have fun telling their kids in the future about the things we’ve done so far, this year. We are hoping we can do more,” said Greene head coach Dave Gorton. “We were very pleased with the way we played in the second quarter. We scored on the opening drive but we got a little complacent after that, we just didn’t have the same emotion. It was homecoming week, and everything else. I thought we really lost focus a little bit and missed some assignments. But second quarter we were really, really sharp.”

Sharp indeed.

The Trojans led Oxford at 6-0 after just the first quarter, when Nate Erickson plunged in for a five-yard touchdown run.

Up 6-0 on an old-time rival is always nice, but let’s try burying the opponent with a 30-point quarter – Gorton’s Trojans were clicking.

Greene, already up at 6-0, then scored twice in 15 seconds to take a 21-0 lead at 9:13 in the second quarter.

Senior, Justin Carman, caught a pass from fellow senior, Coy Austin, at 9:28, all before Austin recovered a fumbled kickoff to set up the next touchdown, another repeat Austin to Carmen connection for a touchdown

“We had two more takeaways, and we scored on both of them. Both were in plus territory and after the fumble recovery by Coy we had another touchdown pass from Coy to Carmen. Later on, Mitchell recovered a fumble and we scored a couple plays later on a Nate Erickson run,” said coach Gorton.

Erickson punched it in from five yards out – while Austin capped off a stellar quarter of scoring with an eight-yard plunge for the score late in the quarter.

Greene led Oxford at 36-0 and the blowout game was only halfway through. Greene elected to use a rotational roster in the second half, allowing more players to see time.

“We threw the ball well, ran the ball well, it was a very complete quarter for us. We took advantage of all our opportunities. We had the ball four times in the second quarter and scored all four times. It was one of the more complete games we have played all year. We controlled the line of scrimmage the way we hoped we would,” said coach Gorton. “It was a very good team effort, we had (Justin) Carmen with 12 (tackles) and (Mitchell) Walters with 10 (tackles) and a sack to lead the defense. Tristan Austin stepped up and played a nice game at linebacker, he had nine tackles. They (Oxford) couldn’t get to the outside, we kept them between the tackles and the linebackers between the tackles had a lot of opportunities to finish.”