LYNN — After coaching the Swampscott football team’s seniors since they were playing youth football in the first grade, assistant coach Fred Dubiel felt the honor of seeing their hometown journey finish in December with a repeat Super Bowl victory.
It turned out, though, there would be one more stop.
By playing major roles in the 60th Agganis Foundation All-Star Game at Manning Field Wednesday night, a few of those seniors helped deliver the North team a 49-12 win over the South, marking the largest margin of victory in the history of the game.
Big Blue star Xaviah Bascon won MVP honors for the North with 199 total yards and two touchdowns, including a 93-yard kick return score that blew the doors open in the second quarter. Teammate Cam O’Brien racked up 118 total yards with three total touchdowns via the air, on the ground and on defense, pairing perfectly with Marblehead George Percy (89 rushing yards, TD) to lead the win.
Despite 99 rushing yards and a touchdown from South MVP Piero Canales (KIPP Academy), Swampscott once again had its fingerprints all over history.
“From Swampscott, that’s what we do, is we come out to win,” Dubiel said. “Because I spent a lot of time with a lot of these players, actually all of the Swampscott kids that were part of this (North) team, it was kind of a curtain call for me, personally. But an absolute pleasure to be able to just come out and coach these kids one last time.”
In their first game since winning the Big Blue’s second straight Div. 5 Super Bowl at Gillette in the fall, Bascon and O’Brien didn’t take long to make their impact on Wednesday.
A pair of big runs from the two on the very first drive set up Percy for a 5-yard touchdown for an early lead. Defense was king for the rest of the first quarter, led by a drive-busting sack from South’s Derek Omoregie (Lynn Classical) and a North interception from Jovante Dailey (Peabody).
But the rest of the game told a much different story, with O’Brien finding Bascon in the flat for a 36-yard catch-and-run TD to make it 14-0 early in the second quarter. South responded with a long drive featuring first down runs from Canales and Lynn Classical’s Mohamed Dale (22 rushing yards) before Jesse Maggs (Lynn English) took a keeper for a 2-yard touchdown, but the ensuing kickoff saw Bascon rip off a 93-yard touchdown return.
South couldn’t get any of its hurry-up drives into the end zone from there until the fourth quarter, and North took full advantage by lighting up the scoreboard. O’Brien punched in a 1-yard keeper for a 28-6 lead before halftime, Peabody’s Jordan Tompkins ran in a 16-yard touchdown early in the third quarter, and Ipswich’s David Lonergan added a 17-yard TD run in the fourth.
O’Brien capped it off with a 24-yard interception return for the final score.
“Great feeling because you get to finish it off, again, with the same guys that you did it with at Gillette,” Bascon said. “We really made a statement tonight, made an impact tonight. I hope people see what Big Blue football is made of after this, and even what the (Northeastern Conference) is made of.”
