High-five: Duxbury star runs for 5 TDs as Dragons deny Abington's spirited upset bid

DUXBURY -- The score-within-the-score was Jack Rees 5, Ryan Solimini 2.

As a Division 6 club, the Abington High football team was a big underdog in Friday night's season opener, squaring off against two-time defending Div. 4 state champ Duxbury in the Dragons' backyard.

But Solimini, a junior running back, did all he could to try to help the Ed Reilly Era get off to a rousing start. First, he made a terrific diving catch on a 28-yard touchdown reception to knot the score in the first quarter. Then he returned the second-half kickoff 83 yards for a go-ahead TD.

For a minute, it appeared that Abington, playing its first game since 1973 without the legendary (and now retired) Jim Kelliher as coach, was going to give new boss Reilly a huge victory right off the bat.

But Solimini ultimately was topped in the Heroics Department by Rees, a 215-pound senior battering ram who rushed for five TDs, three of them in the third quarter, to help Duxbury pull away for a 38-20 win.

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If the five-TD game sounds familiar, it's because graduated star Alex Barlow pulled that trick in last December's wild Div. 4 Super Bowl win over Scituate.

"Alex is my guy!" Rees said with a big smile. "I'm sure he'll see this. He's a dude. He's off at Bentley and I'm sure he'll have a great career there."

Considering that Barlow has graduated, along with Duxbury's top three receivers and four-fifths of its offensive line from last year, Rees' Week 1 star turn (he ran 15 times for 156 yards) was a welcome development.

"He's a fast kid," said fourth-year Duxbury coach Matt Landolfi. "He worked really hard in the offseason with the goal in mind to play running back. He really stepped up tonight and hopefully we can keep going with him, keep him healthy."

Rees opened the scoring with a 14-yard TD run and then put the Dragons back on top, 13-7, with a 1-yard plunge in the second quarter. After Solimini's kickoff return put Duxbury in an immediate 20-16 hole moments into the third quarter, Rees ripped off TDs of 35, 2 and 1 yard on Duxbury's next three possessions to complete the scoring.

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"I'm not really big on my (individual) performance; I just want to win the game," Rees said. "My goal is to win a third state championship. However I can help the team win (I'll do it). I have to give a shout-out to the O-line. You could have driven a bus through some of those holes."

Duxbury's win pushed Landolfi's record to a gaudy 34-3. Reilly is 0-1 at Abington, but the longtime Green Wave assistant found a lot to be happy about in his first game in charge.

"We're never going to be happy losing," Reilly said, "but there are certainly good things we can take from this game. ... Obviously, (Duxbury is) a great program. That's why we (scheduled) them. We wanted to challenge our kids and I thought our kids stepped up to the challenge. They (just) wore us down."

Nazir Paulding (9 carries for 41 yards) had Abington's other TD with a 29-yard run in the second quarter to put the Green Wave ahead, 14-13.

Duxbury responded as 6-3 junior QB Brady Rhinesmith came off the bench to orchestrate a 10-play drive that ended with Gavin Hammond's 30-yard field goal on the final play of the first half for a 16-14 Dragons lead.

Solimini flipped the momentum around when he refused to be tackled on the second-half kickoff. "I just never gave up," he said. "Ryan's just a hell of a player for us, both ways," Reilly raved. "Great athlete, great kid. I knew he'd step up; he always does."

Rees and the Dragons stepped up right after that with three straight scoring drives to keep the Green Wave at bay.

"We realized we had to come together as a team," Rees said of the response. "We know we can run the ball. We know we're a good team. We had to just do our thing. I think that's what changed."

Speaking of change, the switch from Kelliher to Reilly shouldn't be seismic. Kelliher went 313-209-8 over 50 seasons with the Green Wave, winning three EMass Super Bowls and two state championships. But Reilly, whose son Michael is the starting QB, was Kelliher's right-hand man for 20-plus years.

"Coach Kell is here tonight, and I'm glad he is," said Reilly, who also played under Kelliher. "He taught me well. I hope he taught me well, I should say. We're lucky that our whole staff has been together for so long that it doesn't feel too different."

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: High-five: Duxbury star runs for 5 TDs as Dragons deny Abington's spirited upset bid