Cape turned around Saturday night – eight days after falling hugely to Spruce Mountain – and paid the pain forward, piling up a 42-0 lead on visiting Freeport in the first half alone.

Jack Drinan and Nate Weare each earned a pair of TDs in those first two quarters, and QB Jeb Boeschenstein threw for three. And while the Falcons returned from the half looking not broken, but stronger – they managed to hold the Capers to just six more points – a comeback was nowhere in the offing. 48-0 the final.

“We wanted to just take a look at ourselves,” Cape head coach Aaron Filieo said, “and set some goals every week. This week we really wanted to get better, to execute better, just be a little bit more precise and take care of details.”

Cape needed less than a minute and a half, and a mere five plays, to open the scoring. Having worked their way, on a couple quick first downs and short runs, to the Freeport 24, Boeschenstein lobbed a ball left to Weare, who snatched it up on his way to the end zone. 7-0.

The Falcons’ follow-up drive unraveled into a quick three-and-out; they punted, and all too soon Boeschenstein once more, this time with Ben Ekedahl, who broke away from the pack to gain the end zone all over again. The 52-yard play put the Capers on top 14-0 – and barely 4 minutes of the game had elapsed.

The 20 minutes remaining before the break unfolded in essentially the same fashion. Cape executed more crisply and cleanly than they had in their dispiriting loss to Spruce, and faced with a weaker opponent in Freeport – who’ve shown potential, but nothing akin to Spruce’s dominance – simply ran away with the scoreboard.

“Games can obviously be won and lost if you don’t do the little things,” Filieo said. “That was just one of our focuses. We wanted to tackle better – just the basics of football. It was nice to come out and play a pretty clean game, a pretty crisp game, and execute.”

By the half, Weare had rushed for his second, a 13-yarder. Drinan had rushed for two 10-yarders and Boeschenstein had hit Ethan Murphy for a 9-yarder, pumping the Capers’ advantage to 42-0. When the teams returned in the third, the Falcons looked much improved, especially defensively: Nathaniel Cyr sacked Boeschenstein early, and the squad collectively managed to slow Cape’s onslaught nearly to a halt. But despite a handful of solid runs – in particular by Pete LaMagna – the Falcons’ own offense couldn’t catch fire.

In the waning minutes, Cape’s Christian Lavallee tallied his team’s final TD of the night, setting the score at 48-0.

The win bumps Cape to 3-2 on the year. Freeport drops to 1-4. Both teams face off next week with teams nearer their own standings in Class C West, a division with notoriously low parity. Freeport travels on Friday the 10th to Lake Region (1-4) for a 7 p.m. showdown. Cape, meanwhile, ventures to Yarmouth (3-2). That game is also scheduled for Friday at 7.

“I don’t know about momentum – if that’s what you want call it,” Filieo said. “We just want to be moving forward, in the right direction. Not taking steps back. There were a couple weeks there where we felt like we took steps back.

“But we still have work to do. We still have to get better, sharpen up a little bit.”

Nate Weare hauls in a Jeb Boeschenstein pass for Weare’s first TD of the night against visiting Freeport.Freeport’s Jeffery Goldrup latches on Cape runner Jack Drinan for the tackle.Freeport’s Tyler Julien cuts upfield on an offensive play.Jack Drinan runs the ball in for Cape in their 48-0 thrashing of Freeport Saturday evening.Pete LaMagna dashes up the middle of the field with the ball against Cape Saturday night. LaMagna had a handful of nice runs, but the team as a whole couldn’t find an offensive spark, and dropped the game 48-0.Caper Peyton Weatherbie leaves Freeport’s Jake Perry in the dust late in the game.