Cape Cod Tech Football Dominates In Crosstown Rivalry Win

HARWICH – The Cape Cod Tech football team feels like they have two Thanksgiving games, though only one of them is actually played on the holiday.

There’s the real Thanksgiving Day game played against Upper Cape Tech, and then there’s the crosstown rivalry with Monomoy, a score typically settled earlier in the season.

Last Friday just a couple miles south of Cape Tech, the visiting Crusaders dominated from start to finish enroute to a 41-0 win against Monomoy-St. John Paul II. The win brought Cape Tech to 1-1, while Monomoy-St. John Paul II dropped to 0-2.

After losing the season opener 49-12 to Tri-County a week prior, Cape Tech had a chip on its shoulder, head coach Calvin Castillias said. They had to rethink and regroup. They watched film and corrected what needed to be corrected. The coaches coached a little harder. After nine Crusaders played both sides of the ball against Tri-County, the team created a few more one-way players (especially on the lines) to build some more depth and add fresher legs. That all preceded a game in which the atmosphere just had a different feel, according to Castillias.

“Winning this game is basically one of our biggest games of the season, and checking this off the list definitely feels great,” senior running back/linebacker Kaiel Smith said. “I mean, we treat every opponent the same, but for sure, rivalry games obviously have that static to them.”

Junior captain Thomas Allen broke a run of about 50 yards up the left sideline for the night’s first touchdown midway through the first quarter. That served as the first rush of an onslaught of pounding the ball on the ground for the Crusaders, who gashed the Monomoy-JPII defense via the run.

Cape Tech had planned for a pretty balanced attack but saw that the Shark-Lions couldn’t stop the run and stuck with it, Castillias said. The run option — particularly the midline option — worked for the Crusaders all night.

White and junior captain Anthony Bartlett had multiple big gains. Junior captain quarterback Daniel Handville ran in three touchdowns and threw another to sophomore Jordyn Wilson. Smith ran in the game’s final touchdown after already having recorded an interception on defense.

“We didn't even show our full potential tonight,” Handville said.

The win was the third straight for Cape Tech against Monomoy — and also the second consecutive shutout against them for the defense. Castillias himself once played for the co-op team Cape Tech had with what was then Harwich High School. That’s a story he shares with the team, of the “special memories” that were created and have fed into a “truly special rivalry,” he said.

“We executed every step of the way,” Smith said. “We did what we were supposed to do. We do this all week in practice. We work harder than every other team, and this was just basically a pure illustration of that.”

Handville, who transferred to Cape Tech from Nauset, knew Castillias had played on the co-op with Harwich and that the Crusaders football team had a long history with Monomoy. The win, in that sense, meant a lot.

“I think that just sticks with us,” he said.

Monomoy Struggling to Start

The offense hasn’t yet found a way to score in the first two official weeks of the Monomoy-JPII co-op era. But in the opener against Atlantis Charter on Friday, Sept. 5, the Shark-Lions defense delivered.

Monomoy-JPII allowed just one touchdown in the 8-0 loss and generated multiple turnovers, including an interception at the two-yard line by senior Lucas Mirisola and a strip by senior captain Sean Needham to force a fumble, both in the fourth quarter. The defense was “electric,” head coach Rob Sliney said.

“Those are two leaders of the team, and they're coming up with big plays, so very, very proud of how we played overall. We’ve just got to clean it up,” he said.