Ware football takes down No. 5 Northampton 22–12 on Senior Day

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By Dan­ny Barletta
MassLive
April 17, 2021

Ware quar­ter­back Dil­lon Slat­tery runs up the mid­dle in a big win against Northamp­ton. Pho­to by J. Antho­ny Roberts, MassLive

On a day the Ware foot­ball pro­gram hon­ored its 11 seniors before their final home game, the team bond­ed togeth­er to knock off one of the top teams in West­ern Massachusetts.

“Emo­tions were high for us,” head coach Mike Fazio said after the game. “Our kids have been play­ing foot­ball togeth­er for 12 years most of them … I was very excit­ed that they were able to end their senior day with a win, espe­cial­ly against a real­ly good pro­gram like Northamp­ton. That was a real­ly sol­id win for us.”

Northamp­ton entered the con­test as the No. 5 team in the region, but the Indi­ans rose to the chal­lenge on Sat­ur­day, com­ing up with a 22–12 vic­to­ry to move to 4–1 on the sea­son. Quar­ter­back Dil­lon Slat­tery, one of the senior cap­tains, had a big game on the field, but before that, start­ed to feel the emo­tions of his last home game.

“I felt sick as a dog, I had the but­ter­flies in my stom­ach walk­ing up the stairs in the begin­ning,” Slat­tery said. “I was talk­ing to my oth­er senior cap­tains, I was like ‘This is it for us. We got to leave it all out there’ and that’s what we did.”

Ware came out strong, forc­ing a Blue Dev­ils three-and-out before march­ing down 82 yards for its first score. Andrew Soltys got the Indi­ans on the board with a four-yard touch­down run, then caught a pass from Slat­tery in the end zone for the two-point con­ver­sion to make the score 8–0.

On its next pos­ses­sion, Ware ini­tial­ly got backed up, but on 3rd and 16, they called a time­out to set up a trick play. Soltys nev­er returned to the hud­dle, but stayed near the side­line where he was going to line up, and Northamp­ton nev­er saw him.
 
Slat­tery just had to get him the ball.
 
“I saw it right away,” Slat­tery said. “I went for a quick cadence, turned, fired it, almost over­threw him, but we saw it there. I don’t know how. That kid is smart, he pulled it off.”

When Soltys caught the ball, he had noth­ing but green in front of him, tak­ing it to the house for a 76-yard touch­down. The extra point made it 15–0, and the Indi­ans were mak­ing a state­ment on their home field.

“It was a good play call, it worked, and we’re very hap­py with the result,” Fazio said.
 
After forc­ing yet anoth­er Northamp­ton three-and-out, anoth­er senior cap­tain, Jack Tweed­ie, came up with a huge blocked punt that set Ware up right at the three yard line. It took Slat­tery two plays to run into the end zone to put the Indi­ans up 22–0.
 
How­ev­er, the Blue Dev­ils weren’t going down with­out a fight. On the next pos­ses­sion, they marched 56 yards for a touch­down, as fresh­man Mykal Nor­ris scored from the sev­en yard line on a 4th-and‑1. The two-point try failed, and the half­time score was 22–6.
 
In the sec­ond half, Northamp­ton fig­ured out how to slow Ware’s offense, forc­ing them to punt for the first time. Then, the Blue Dev­ils offense scored again in the third quar­ter to make it 22–12, this time on a touch­down by Brett Holden.
 
Hold­en rushed for a game high 78 yards, in addi­tion to his trip to the end zone.

After that score, Ware went on a long, method­i­cal dri­ve led by Slat­tery and Soltys, but were stopped by Northamp­ton on fourth down inside the five yard line. The Blue Dev­ils’ ensu­ing dri­ve also stalled out at the Indi­ans 25. Ware need­ed just one more first down to seal the game and on a 3rd-and‑5, Slat­tery put the team on his back one last time.

“I walked over to the offen­sive coor­di­na­tor, and I said ‘Give me the ball. I’m gonna get us a first down and end this game,’” Slat­tery said.

That’s exact­ly what he did with a tough nine-yard run through mul­ti­ple defend­ers. Slat­tery end­ed up rush­ing for 33 yards and a touch­down, while com­plet­ing four of his five pass attempts for 145 yards and a touchdown.

“He just runs so hard,” Soltys said. “Me and him are com­plete oppo­site run­ners. I run fast, and I try to avoid peo­ple real­ly. He looks for con­tact, and he gets the tough yards.”

Both styles of run­ning were very effec­tive for Ware on Sat­ur­day, as Soltys rushed for 56 yards and a touch­down. In addi­tion, he was on the receiv­ing end of all 145 of Slattery’s pass­ing yards. Every time the Indi­ans need­ed a big play, they seemed to go to Soltys in some form.

“Andrew Soltys is a real­ly good ath­lete, a hard, hard-work­ing kid,” Fazio said. “He was able to get in some space ath­let­i­cal­ly … He runs hard. He did a good job.”

It was a spe­cial day for Ware foot­ball, and the team came up with its biggest win of the sea­son for the seniors.

“It’s awe­some play­ing on the field with some of my best friends,” Slat­tery said. “It’s a feel­ing that I’ll nev­er for­get being on this Ware team. We’re a bunch of hard­core grit­ty play­ers. It was just amazing.”