Bryant gets off to fast start

There was not a lot that went wrong on the gridiron for Bryant last fall. After winning a combined seven games the previous two seasons, they earned the same amount of victories in their first eight games. The streak put them in position for the Cup Division crown. Unfortunately, they fell flat late, dropping their final two to miss the postseason.
“To go 7-3 and not make the playoffs, that’s sad,” senior running back Darro Clarke said. “It left an empty spot because we should have made it. It was in our hands and we let it slip away. [But] It is helping because we do not want it to happen again. We are not thinking about it, but we have it in the back of our heads. We are not going to let any game get away from us.”
They certainly got off to a good start in their playoff mission, holding off South Bronx, 15-8, Saturday afternoon at Flushing Memorial Field. Clarke ran for 81 yards and a touchdown and Justin Polizzi added a score on the ground. Defensively, Stephon Kelly had three sacks, Clarke recovered a fumble and Jacques Toney and Mario Yu had five tackles apiece.
It was not a flawless performance, Coach Carl Brosnan said, on either side of the ball. A running team, Bryant amassed just 161 total yards behind a new offensive line and struggled to adjust to the speed of South Bronx. Still, Brosnan said, he never throws back victories, certainly not when it comes to start a season. After all, in his 21 years at the helm, Brosnan has begun 1-0 just four times.
“You’re paid to win, and we want to win,” he said. “Last year we played a much better game against McKee/Staten Island Tech, and lost 8-0. But we have a lot of work to do. I saw that despite everything that went wrong, they kept trying to get it right. They did not put their heads down, they did not sulk, they didn’t feel sorry for themselves. They said we’ll get it right next play. Somehow, someway, we found a few cracks.”