MHS Football Pounds Salem [VIDEO]

’s varsity football team destroyed Salem 35-7 Friday night on the shoulders of stellar senior running back Will Quigley, who rushed for four touchdowns and over 100 yards.

Quigley’s night would have been even more spectacular, but in the fourth quarter his 71-yard touchdown run was nullified because of a penalty.

“Will’s a heck of a back, he does a great job for us, he finds the holes when he has to, and when there’s nothing there he makes something out of it,” head coach Jim Rudloff said. “One thing people might overlook is how well our offensive line plays in front of Will, to get to him the other team has to go through them, and they did a great job keeping Salem out of our backfield tonight."

With Gus Percy out with an ankle injury, Ian Maag was under center Friday night. Maag and Quigley mixed up runs on Marblehead’s third and fourth possessions of the game leading to rushing touchdowns. Maag didn’t throw a pass until the 17^th offensive play of the game.

Quigley scored from the 31 with 6:19 left in the second quarter to put Marblehead up 6-0. On Marblehead’s next possession Quigley ran it in from the one and added a two point conversion to put the Magicians up 14-0 with 1:30 left in the first half.

The key play of the second touchdown drive was a blocked punt at midfield by Marblehead’s Jeffery Peras, giving the Magicians the ball on the Salem 45 with 6:19 left in the second quarter.

“We had a great week of practice, good preparation, all of our attention was on Salem this week,” Maag said. “We have other big games coming up but we’re focused on one game at a time, Salem’s done, now the focus is on Danvers.”

Salem cut the deficit in half on a 45-yard strike from Christian Dunston to Ben Kapnis, but the Witches left Maag 47 seconds on the clock, way too much time for the junior quarterback.

Maag took Marblehead 76 yards in five plays, all passes, the last a touchdown toss to Zach Cuzner as time expired, putting Marblehead up 21-7 at halftime.

“Our offense took a while, but our defense really helped us out,” Maag said. “I play against them every day in practice and they’re tough, they came up huge for us tonight.”

Salem tried an onside kick to start the second half, Marblehead’s Chris Piper gobbled it up to thwart the Salem threat. Marblehead's defense never allowed Salem to establish a running or a passing game Friday night.

“We’ve got 17, 18 kids who rotate on defense for us so it keeps us fresh,” Rudloff said. “I’m very pleased with the improvement I’ve seen in several of our guys since we started practicing.”

Quigley finished up his night with a six-yard scoring run and a four-yard score in the fourth quarter. Christian Flores’ PAT kick made the final 35-7.

“We felt awful after the and we really didn’t want to feel like that again,” Quigley said. “The last two weeks of practice have been great, we’re really focused on the job at hand and now we’ll focus on Danvers.”

Quigley now has 11 rushing touchdowns on the season.

The Magicians improved to 5-2 and head to Danvers next Friday night to take on the Falcons at 7 p.m. Salem came into last night’s game looking for their second win of the year, Marblehead was looking for payback after losing last fall 21-13 to the Witches at Piper Field.