The 16 players that comprise the senior class of this year’s Marlboro football team gave their fans one last departing gift in their homecoming game on Friday night at Dennis Burkett Field with a 72-0 destruction of Rondout Valley in a critical Class B Division I game.

The Dukes (4-2) spread the wealth throughout, with nine different players scoring touchdowns in the blowout victory to cap off their 2019 home schedule. “It feels so awesome to go out there in my last game and put up 72 points with my brothers out there,” senior quarterback Christian Diorio said. “I’ve been with them my whole life now, and it’s just an awesome feeling that I’m letting sink in right now.”

The game continued the Dukes’ dominance in Class B this season, and saw the squad back in dominating form after they lost at Minisink Valley last week. “This was a big one,” Marlboro head coach Brian Beck said. “All week long we talked about, especially the seniors, about what kind of legacy are you going to leave here? We were coming off another loss and it was a rebound week for us and I’m just proud of the effort. The boys came out and they did a tremendous job. I think they just left their legacy as possible the largest victory in Marlboro history. So that’s something they can hang their hat on. We’ll enjoy it for a night, but then we have to turn our attention back to Class A, who we’re 0-2 against. We have to get ready for Wallkill now.”

Marlboro is now 2-0 in league play, and can clinch the top division seed in the playoffs with a victory at Port Jervis in the final week of the regular season.

“It’s huge,” Diorio said of the win. “I think now we’re in the playoffs now. It’s just big to bounce back a week after the Minisink game. So we’re on the right path again.”

The Dukes came out of the gate strong on Friday, as they took an 8-0 lead at the 5:29 mark of the first when Diorio threw a laser downfield to find a wide-open Gio Frisenda for a 40-yard score. “That’s my boy, so I was just throwing it up there and I knew he was coming down with it,” Diorio said. Marlboro successfully converted a two-point conversion when Diorio (3-6, 114 yards passing, 3 TDs) found senior running back Armani Banton open in the end zone.

The Dukes running game punished the Ganders (1-5) in the second quarter, as sophomore Matt Drake raced down the sidelines for a highlight reel 50-yard TD gallop to give Marlboro a 16-0 lead (after sophomore Elijah Williams ran it in for two) just 51 seconds into the quarter. Marlboro then stretched the lead to 22-0 with 6:44 left in the half on a 20-yard touchdown run from sophomore Chris Thorne.

The lead ballooned to 30-0 with 3:55 remaining in the second when Diorio threaded the needle of the Rondout defense and found junior Jaden Rios for a 31-yard TD reception. Diorio then found sophomore Chinedu Okasi for two more on the subsequent conversion.

Rios then produced the play of the game by ripping off a 75-yard punt return touchdown, as he sliced through the Ganders’ defense and took off down the sidelines for the score to make it 37-0 with 35.2 seconds left in the first half. “My teammates were setting up blocks for me and it was just a really good play,” he said.

Marlboro continued to pour it on in the third quarter, as Banton sprinted in for an eight-yard score to put Marlboro up 44-0 just 65 seconds into the half, and senior Amarian Hughes quickly added an impressive 54-yard touchdown run to make it 51-0 with 8:04 left in the third. After an on-field skirmish between multiple players on both teams had to be broken up, the Dukes responded on the very next play, with Diorio throwing a 43-yard TD bomb that was hauled in by senior Freddie Callo to put Marlboro 58-0 with 4:50 remaining in the third.

Senior running back C.J. Faircloth bulldozed his way into the end zone for a three-yard score to give Marlboro a 65-0 lead with 9:09 remaining in the fourth, and the last touchdown of the game was fittingly scored by another senior, as Troy McEwen spun his way through the defense for a 24-yard touchdown to seal the 72-0 final with 1:43 left in the contest. “We’re lucky here at Marlboro where we move a lot of guys up early, and we had a tremendous class of seniors where some of them are three-year starters like Christian Diorio, Matt Brown, Gio Frisenda and Dylan Teneyck,” Beck said. “They’ve been around here for years, and they know how it’s been done the right way.

It’s something we talked about going into homecoming, that you’ve got to carry on the breed. The guys before you did it the right way, and they expect you to do it the right way, so that when they show up to games like this they can be proud of the product that’s on the field because they were part of building it. So credit to our senior class for doing it the right way. They show up to work every single day, and I couldn’t be prouder of them.”
Nearly overshadowed in the offensive explosion on Friday night was the fact that the Marlboro defense secured its third shutout of the season, and actually held Rondout junior quarterback Jimmy Brush (2-5, 3 INTS) to negative 12 yards passing since the Ganders lost yardage on both of his completed passes.

With another division win in their pockets, the Dukes will next travel to Wallkill on Friday night to face off with the Panthers in a local rivalry game. Marlboro will get a chance to claim its first win of the season against Class A competition after dropping games to Cornwall and Minisink Valley earlier this fall. “It’s a big step for us to go up a class again,” Beck said. “We’ve got to be better. It’s a great test for us, to get on a bus and go play away, which we’ll have to do now for the rest of the way with our away schedule and then all the potential playoff games we could make. It’s something we’re really looking forward to. We have to correct some of the errors we’ve had so far against Class A teams, especially on the away side.”