Fast start propels Cape to 47-28 win over Dover

The Cape football team moved to 5-2 with a 47-28 win over Dover Oct. 24.

Jameson Tingle opened the scoring with a masterful run, picking up more than half of his 108 yards with the play. 

“First and foremost, I want to thank my linemen, receivers and everyone that was blocking for me on that play,” Tingle said.

The exceptional blocking allowed the junior to wreak havoc with his arm in addition to his legs. 

“We worked great as a team today,” said center Robbie Payton. “We knew the assignment, and we didn’t put any pressure on ourselves that we didn’t need.”

“Offensively, we just kept things simple and we executed,” Tingle said.

Tingle finished 5-for-7 with 79 yards and two touchdowns, both going to senior Lamar McCoy. On the second score, McCoy’s face mask was grabbed and ripped down, but he stayed inbounds and with control of the ball for the score. McCoy added a third score later in the game when senior Mikey Thompson took over in the second half.

“We go over a lot of plays in practice, and it's especially important to get that connection with the quarterback, no matter who it is, and my quarterbacks did a great job tonight getting me the ball,” McCoy said.

Ty Handy scored a rushing touchdown between McCoy’s first two scores. The senior earned his touchdown on defense the play before, running down a botched snap on a Dover fourth down to put the Vikings on the doorstep. 

“When I took the handoff, I saw a bunch of green grass in front of me, thanks to my offensive linemen, and walked right into the end zone,” Handy said.

Cape finished the game with 175 rushing yards on 24 carries, good for 7.3 yards per carry. The cherry on top for the linemen may have happened on defense when Payton, a center on offense and middle linebacker on defense, scooped up what Dover thought was an incomplete pass but Cape knew was a fumble. Payton juked, trucked and bulldozed his way into the end zone for a big-man touchdown.

“That was a crazy moment,” Payton said. “Every practice, every week when we see the ball on the ground, we always pick it up, and we transferred that into the game. I’m not used to running like that. On my first cut, I thought my hip was giving out.”

Cape wrapped up the first half with a sizable lead, 33-7, thanks in part to the defensive secondary shutting down the Dover air attack.

“They have a good quarterback over there in Alex Sterling, and so our guys got to showcase what they can do against the pass a little more than they normally would,” said coach Chip Knapp.

Handy and his classmate Navin Duffy were part of a legion of boom in the game, timing their jumps with precision and making the Senators earn their catches.

“I tell my DBs all the time, if you see that ball up there and he’s trying to get it … he doesn’t come down with it,” Handy said. “The linebackers and defensive line got to the quarterback a lot today, and that helped us.”

In the second half, the second unit took over, and while there were some understandable bumps in the road, the boys got valuable snaps and managed two scores of their own. The first was the aforementioned Thompson-to-McCoy connection, but the second came on an onside kick.

Duffy, ironically the punter, may have used his kicker knowledge when he read and timed the kick perfectly, slicing straight to the ball and into the end zone 55 yards away to finish off the 47-28 contest.

“Our guys executed, like any other game,” Knapp said. “We got ahead of them a bit at halftime, and then the second unit came in, struggled a bit, but guys got to play and we saw some good things.”

The victory moves the Vikings to 5-2 overall and 2-1 in the division with games against Caesar Rodney and St. Georges Tech remaining.