By DREW BONIFANT
Monitor staff

Perhaps, for all the time spent wondering what adjustments the Bow football team had to make to Division II, the question should have been the other way around.

Maybe it’s Division II that has to start adjusting to the Falcons.

It’s hard to come to a different conclusion based on what September has had to offer. Bow looked just as deep, versatile and formidable Saturday afternoon as it did in its opening win, trampling Hillsboro-Deering/Hopkinton, 42-6, at Hopkinton’s Houston Field.

Bow ran at will and crushed the Redhawks’ ground game, following the script of its 42-0 victory over Pembroke last week, and this time added throwing the football to a bag of tricks that so far looks as effective against a new tier of competition as it did during the Falcons’ D-III days.

“We were able to settle down and take command,” said Bow Coach Paul Cohen, whose team broke open what was a scoreless tie after the first quarter with 28 straight points. “From then on, it was pretty much us. They had a lot of difficulty answering anything that we were able to do on either side of the ball.

Once again, the theme of Bow’s victory was domination along the line. The Falcons (2-0) blew up blocks and stuffed the Redhawks’ talented backs, never letting H-D/H (1-1) sustain enough of a drive to challenge the mounting lead.“We’ve scored 70-some points in two weeks. That says it all, right there.”

There was one miscue – Henry Yianakopolos (six carries, 73 yards) broke free from tacklers for a 67-yard run with 4:56 left in the third quarter, making the score 28-6. Aside from that, Redhawk ballcarriers ran 24 times for 32 yards.

“The bottom line today, they beat us up,” H-D/H Coach Jay Wood said. “They punched us right in the mouth, on offense and defense. Their line was just boom, boom, boom, very physcical. That’s where the game ended.”

It transferred into the passing game. Nate Alford routinely got himself into quarterback Caleb Yianakopolos’s face, tipping a pair of passes for interceptions, one for himself and one for teammate Andrew Berube.

“It felt great. I love the work we put in, it all pays off on the field,” Alford said of the line’s performance. “It’s exciting to make plays. You envision those. ... I was happy to be there, glad to have the opportunity.”

It was the same story on offense. Bow rushers ran 49 times for 267 yards – 125 of them going on 15 carries to Jack Corriveau, who scored the Falcons’ first two touchdowns on a 2-yard dive and 37-yard jaunt. He added a third in the final minute of the third quarter when a Bow fumble near the goal line bounced straight to him in the end zone, increasing the lead to 35-6.

“It wasn’t possible without the line,” he said. “I told the line before the game, ‘You give us five yards of blocking, we’re going to double it in yards.’ We ran the same play like 10 times, and it was all because of the line.”

Cohen saved some of the credit for his junior halfback.

“He’s very, very elusive,” he said. “He just has an innate ability, and you really can’t coach that. You can show them what you want them to do, but especially at the high school level, they either have that or they don’t have it. Fortunately for us, Jack does have it.”

When the Redhawks doubled down on their efforts to stop the Bow ground attack, the Falcons had the answer for that as well. Long a program that would play whole games without trying a pass, Bow got eight completions on 12 attempts for 87 yards from quarterback Matt Harkins, many of them keeping drives alive.

A 7-yard screen on 4th-and-4 to Alford set up Corriveau’s first score, a 6-yard touchdown pass from Harkins to Mac Kimball with 6:08 to go in the third followed up Mark Borak’s 5-yard touchdown run, and a beautiful rollout pass hit Corriveau in stride for 51 yards to pave the way for Justin Mooney’s 1-yard run with 6:51 to play, the final score of the game.

“Over the past several years, we’ve had that ‘Oh, Bow’s ground-and-pound, that’s all they can do,’ ” Cohen said. “I think we have shown anybody who was watching today, if you only assume that we’re going to blast right, blast left, that is on your peril. We have a stable of running backs, we also have a stable of receivers.”

A skeptic of the Falcons’ success would point out the competition, specifically that the wins came against a Pembroke team that’s struggled in recent years and a fledgling H-D/H program playing its first season as an NHIAA varsity team.

But this is the same Redhawks team that thumped Manchester West, 34-0, last week and had already shown promise at competing in D-II, even if Saturday had a humbling effect.

“I told the kids, ‘Don’t worry about it. Bury it. We’re going to win some games,’ ” Wood said. “We shot ourselves in the foot offensively big time with inopportune timing of penalties and whatnot, especially on our first series.”

Wood also didn’t downplay the teaching value of a loss like Saturday’s as his players get used to the varsity climate.

“They’re going to see it on tape,” he said. “It’s all the technique, and they’ll see it again. Hopefully we get better and we progress.”

There’s not much higher Bow can go – only another opponent Friday in Gilford-Belmont, against which it can continue to prove its place in the new division.

“These guys can hold their heads up and puff their chests out just a little bit more, because this is now second victory,” Cohen said. “I tell them ‘For now, you guys are kings of the mountain. So enjoy Saturday and Sunday. But Monday, reality smacks you in the face and it’s time to prepare.’ ”