By Michael Letendre
BRISTOL – If the CIAC decided to commence the state tournament today, the Bristol Eastern football team would make up part of the Class L field.
And it’s been a long time since the words ‘Lancers’ and ‘state tournament’ were part of the same sentence.
There’s a long way to go in 2021 but off an encouraging 2-0 start, there’s plenty of optimism going around the program.
A big part of that surge has been the outstanding play of senior running back Alex Marshall – well on his way to a 1,000-yard rushing campaign.
In just two contests this year, he’s amassed 337 total yards and five touchdowns – including a career-single game-high of 243 rushing yards against Edwin O. Smith during Week 1, leading to an easy 35-6 win for the Lancers.
“Put everybody on our schedule on notice that Alex Marshall is for real,” said Eastern coach Anthony Julius.
He crashes into opposing defenses with reckless abandonment and ruthless aggression – two traits that make up every special player who takes the gridiron on a weekly basis.
But the gaudy offensive statistics are just one part of what makes Marshall so special.
He’s one of the squad’s vocal leaders and when he speaks, it very obvious that his teammates listen.
Marshall gets the job done on both sides of the ball and his defensive efforts are just as impressive as his offensive numbers.
He is already one of the team’s leaders in overall tackles and tackles-for-losses this year.
“He’s been a senior leader for us the entire season,” said Julius of Marshall. “He’s got tremendous work ethic and he’s an excellent runner.”
While this team doesn’t bring a ton of 11v11 football experience to the fold this year, the team got plenty of reps in the condensed 7vs7 campaign last season.
And those reps have paid dividends as the Lancers have taken advantage of what Edwin O. Smith and RHAM allowed them this year.
That fast start has made that weird 7vs7 pandemic campaign a quick thing of the past.
“The 7v7 that we did last year was eerie,” said Julius. “It was quiet. I think people could hear me too much, though every body can kind of hear me [anyways].”
Everyone certainly heard Julius at the end of the RHAM game this past Friday when it appeared the Raptors were going to steal the game away from the Lancers.
On the closing play, with RHAM making a four-yard reception to get to the Eastern one yard-line, time should have run out.
Instead, through confusion on the official running the game clock, the Raptors scored on a one-yard plunge at the buzzer – a play that should have never been allowed to commence in the first place.
After the touchdown was signaled, Julius ran onto the field, stated his case rather forcefully about the timing of the final play, and the officials realized a mistake was made.
The touchdown was called off, Eastern seized a 13-7 victory over the Raptors – meaning the Lancers moved to 2-0 overall and that sure felt better than previous starts at Eastern in recent memory.
“I couldn’t be happier for my kids,” said Julius. “I couldn’t be happier for their parents because I can’t even imagine not being able to watch your child play the sport they love. To get the players out here [against E.O. Smith] in front of the student body, there was a buzz in the building all week about this, [and] for our guys to come and put on a great performance for us was really, really awesome.”
