By Pete Mollica

Senior running back Alex Sampson scored three TDs for the Blue Devils.

MCDONALD — All the McDonald High football team is trying to do is get better every week and that definitely spells trouble for the rest of the teams in Tier Two of the Inter Tri-County League.

The Blue Devils scored on their first eight possessions and once when they didn’t have possession and rolled easily 61-30 over Jackson-Milton Friday night in their homecoming contest.

McDonald (5-0, 2-0) rolled up 501 total yards, including 376 on the ground, against the Bluejays (2-3, 0-2).

Senior running back Alex Sampson added three touchdowns, giving him 16 on the season, and rushed for 116 yards on just 10 carries and played just over half the game, while senior Mikey Thomas added 86 yards on three carries and scored twice as the Blue Devils dominated from the start.

“We felt pretty good about this team coming into the season,” said McDonald coach Dan Williams. “We had a lot of kids coming back from last year, but we had a new quarterback and some other new faces and we felt that if we could just keep improving as the season went on we’d be pretty good.

“Tonight we got another great effort out of our offensive line, while the defense played outstanding,” Williams said. “But I told our kids this week that we’ve just got to keep getting better and hopefully we can peak around the seventh or eighth game of the season.”

Williams was pleased with his junior quarterback, Nicola Accordino, who had only thrown 20 passes through the team’s first four games.

“Nick’s a good quarterback, but we really haven’t had to throw the ball that much this year, especially the way our ground game has been going,” Williams added. “We felt like we wanted him to throw around 10 passes tonight. He threw nine and completed all nine. I’ll take that.”

Accordino finished 9-for-9 and 125 yards with one touchdown.

Jackson-Milton, which opened the season with two straight victories, has dropped three in a row.

“We haven’t really been tackling all that well in these last three games,” said Bluejays coach Tim McGlynn.

“We’ve worked hard on it all week long, but we didn’t get it done and I take all the responsibility for that,” he added.

“We talked about it again at halftime and we came out and played very well, even if it was against their second team, but hopefully it will give these kids some confidence,” he added. “We only have five seniors on this team and we are playing a lot of young kids.”

The Blue Devils scored on their first offensive play when Thomas broke loose for a 65-yard run, then he picked off a Bluejays pass on the first play of the next series and McDonald scored just four plays later on a 27-yard run by Sampson.

They scored on their next series when Accordino hit Adrien Tillery with a 12-yard scoring toss and then on the next series Devin Bansberg picked off another Bluejays pass and ran it back 60 yards for another score and that was just the first quarter.

In the second quarter Sampson ran 5 yards for a score and Thomas went 26 for another and Samson came back to open the third quarter with a 51-yard scoring jaunt.

The Blue Jays finally got on the scoreboard midway in the third quarter when Ben Carlile hit Reggie Johnson with a 12-yard pass, but the Blue Devils answered right back on a short run by Nick Cupan.

The Bluejays scored once more in the third on a 9-yard run by Jeff Balent and twice more in the final quarter as Carlile hit Frank Arroyo with a 9-yard pass and Wilbur Wilson ran 4 yards for the final score.

McDonald’s reserves also got into the scoring act as sophomore Mike Helco raced 71 yards for the Blue Devils final score.

mollica@vindy.com