SACO – The Thornton Academy football team cruised to a 38-0 shutout win over the visiting Cheverus Stags to remain perfect at the midway point of the regular season on Saturday.

The TA return game came up big for the Trojans, as C.J. LaBreck returned a first quarter punt the distance and later would return the opening kickoff of the second half for another score.

“It’s huge – we have a lot of athletic kids that are long and can make plays like that. Some weeks it works, sometimes it may not, but this week we were fortunate enough to get a couple,” said TA head coach Kevin Kezal.

It was not always easy for the Trojans, who fought to a stalemate with the Stags until LaBreck returned his punt with just 1:02 remaining in the first. The Stags also were able to move the ball, picking up nearly 70 yards in the first quarter on a tough TA defense.

LaBreck’s punt return touchdown gave the Trojans the momentum they needed, as they got rolling early in the second quarter. Quarterback Will Mitchell kicked things off with a 59-yard touchdown run to extend the TA lead to 14-0 just 32 seconds into the quarter. Mitchell would connect with LaBreck on a 44-yard touchdown pass less than six minutes later to give TA the 20-0 lead at halftime.

“(Cheverus is) a really well-coached team, they’re disciplined on offense, we practiced for them all week but game speed is different than practice speed. We talked about what we had to do defensively and made plays,” said Kezal.

Mitchell and LaBreck continued to impress in the second half as well. After LaBreck’s opening kickoff return touchdown, the pair would connect for another touchdown pass, this time from 11 yards out, to give TA the 32-0 lead to put the game out of reach.

Mitchell would later hit Anthony Bracamonte with a 10-yard touchdown pass with under five minutes left to secure the 38-0 shutout.

Mitchell led TA on the ground with 71 rushing yards, while Bracamonte added 37 and Grant Dow 24. LaBreck led TA with 111 yards receiving, while Bracamonte added 32 yards.

“We take one week at a time. We obviously want to earn the bye but it’s one week at a time,” said Kezal. “It’s good, the kids had a good week of practice coming off the huge win last week, you always worry about a letdown. Cheverus is a good team and a proud program so you don’t want to let down, the kids played hard, it was a good team win in all three phases.”