The Newburgh Free Academy Goldbacks got off to a slow start.
They even trailed.

After falling behind by seven points on the game-opening drive, the Goldbacks scored 42 straight points on their way to a 48-13 win over the Pine Bush Bushmen in a Class AA football game on Friday at Thomas Lonergan Field in Pine Bush.

“We started out a little slow,” Newburgh coach Bill Bianco said.

“We had a quirky week in practice. A bunch of kids were sick. A couple kids were dinged up here and there, so we came out a little flat, but once we caught our stride, we loosed up a little bit, and they weren’t playing so tight.”

Justin Lassic was at the center of everything as he scored four touchdowns, three on the ground and one through the air. All three of his rushing touchdowns came in the Goldbacks’ 21-point second quarter.

“We just changed our blocking schemes a little and made sure guys were hitting the right assignments,” Lassic said. “After a while, we’re just wearing them down and just do what we do best and score.”

The Goldbacks had a rare defensive struggle in the first quarter. They didn’t have an early answer for Pine Bush’s Ruben Simpson, who carried the load as the Pine Bush opened the game with a 12-play drive that chewed nearly 8 minutes off the game clock.

Simpson carried the load, running the ball 10 times and finishing with a 1-yard touchdown around the right side to give the Bushmen a 7-0 lead.

“Their running back, (Simpson), he’s pretty good,” Lassic said. “But we’ve just got to stop him and make sure he doesn’t get going.”
The Goldbacks bottled him up after the game-opening drive and scored another 21 points in the third quarter to take a 42-7 lead. Nyeir Johnson ran for a 13-yard touchdown run. Lassic caught a 26-yard pass from quarterback Jaiseon Barnwell and Denvyr Herring scored on a 15-yard run.

“In the second and third quarter, a lot off the outside runs were really good,.” Lassic said. “We got a lot of yards on the outside runs. Staying on our assignments and not having a lot of penalties really helped us get going.”

The defense only made one other mistake. That came with 4:09 left in the third quarter when Connor Amiel connected with Noah Schorling for a 70-yard touchdown pass to cut the Goldbacks’ lead to 42-13. The defense halted the Bushmen in the first half on the strength of three interceptions, two by Michael Chambliss and one by Julian Ortiz.

Zaire Jacklyn scored the game’s final touchdown with 15 seconds left in the game.

“I thought our run game has been very good,” Bianco said. “It’s not that it wasn’t good tonight, but I thought our pass game really opened up tonight. It freed some things up for us.”

The Goldbacks will head into their biggest game of the season so far when they visit to Faller Field to face the unbeaten Middletown Middies on Friday. The winner could have an inside track on the top seed in the Section 9 Class AA playoffs.

“It’s still about improving our team,” Bianco said. “We’ve got to prepare for them and that whole thing, but we still have to keep improving day by day. We can’t get fat and happy. We’ve got to keep trying to fix mistakes and get in better shape and get stronger.”