The Oxford Wolverines won in impressive fashion against New Fairfield 54 – 21 in their home opene at Oxford High School Saturday afternoon.
Senior captain and tailback Nick Donofrio had a big day for the Wolverines (2 – 0), scoring four touchdowns, including two 46-yard rushes, and two kickoff returns, for 86 and 87 yards.
The latter kickoff return was the opening play of the second half, confirming the rout at 41 – 14.
Oxford head coach Joe Stochmal was pleased with his team’s performance.
“Big win. 2 – 0 to start the season is something that we’ve never done before,” he said. “We are still a young program, but we are building and we want to continue to keep building and make ourselves the best program we can be.”
New Fairfield (0 – 2) opened the game’s scoring, when Rebels’ running back Robert Fiamengo ran for an eight-yard touchdown with 7:33 left in the first quarter.
“We are still having a bit of a hard time starting off. But we are getting there,” Stochmal said. “We are gonna gonna make mistakes early in the game, but it shows we are a pretty good football team.”
Oxford responded with 21 unanswered points, including a 97-yard touchdown pass by Alex Miller to Jordan Biagionni with 7:12 left in the first quarter.
Biagionni scored three touchdowns total for Oxford and also had an intercepted a pass and returned it 82 yards for a score, with 13 seconds left in the second quarter.
Miller connected with Biagionni again with 1:20 left in the third quarter, on a 36 yard pass.
New Fairfield tried to keep it close entering halftime, when junior quarterback Louis Falcone hit Ben Kimmel for a 40-yard touchdown to get the Rebels within a score of Oxford.
Donofrio would return his first of two kick returns off of the ensuing kickoff.
Junior Chris Hovan also had a great day for the Wolverines, recording ten tackles, which led the team, and a 54-yard touchdown run for Oxford to round out their scoring on the day.
Donofrio added a 69-yard interception return, to the New Fairfield 16, but the Wolverines were unable to capitalize, missing a field goal later in the drive.
“Nick is our go-to guy. He had five touchdowns last week and four today. We put him as thr deep man in returns this week. It paid dividends.”
Senior Dave Samuelman had eight tackles for Oxford, as well.
New Fairfield scored a consolation touchdown with 24 seconds left in the game. Sophomore Nick Guardi had a two yard run to give New Fairfield their final touchdown.
Looking forward, Stochmal is not letting the 2 – 0 start get to his or his team’s heads.
“I think our kids are excited. We are going to have to work hard this week in practice, we will come out on Saturday and lay it all out and see what happens during the game,” he said.
Oxford hosts Stratford (2 – 0) next Saturday at 1 p.m.
