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WARREN — A very successful inaugural season for the East Bay Warriors football program came to a slightly disappointing end Saturday afternoon, Nov. 5, as the local Pee Wee Division entry fell to the visiting Edgewood Eagles, 20-0, in the Rhode Island-Southeastern Massachusetts Pop Warner League championship game played at Vets Field.

The Eagles advance to the regional playoffs unbeaten with a 10-0 overall record. Edgewood finished its RISMA slate without having allowed a point in any of its games while scoring in upwards of 250.

For the Warriors, their first-ever fall campaign came to a close with a noteworthy 8-2 overall mark, including last week’s victory over Old Rochester in the playoff semifinals.

“Edgewood has a great team. They have a lot of fast, athletic kids,” said East Bay head coach Jason Proulx. “Our kids played great. They left it all on the field. Edgewood was just better than us today.”

The Eagles built a 14-0 lead by half-time after Devin Prak and Alphanso Paye ran for touchdowns. Prak, the Edgewood quarterback, ripped off a 30-yard scoring scamper while Paye, the Eagles’ tailback, scored from 10 yards out. Edgewood kicked for one extra point, worth two in Pop Warner.

After a failed on-side kick by the locals to start the second half, a mixture of the East Bay first and second defenses eventually halted an Eagles’ drive inside the Warriors’ 20-yard line.

The Warriors had one of their better offensive possessions next. Running back Matt Ditondo helped East Bay move the chains, running for a pair of first downs, including once with a 10-yard burst on a third-and-two play.

The locals would cross midfield against the vaunted Edgewood defense, though the march ended prematurely when a Warrior fumbled and the Eagles recovered with exactly a minute to go in the third quarter.

Edgewood would run out of the rest of the period and chew up a significant amount of the fourth quarter before the Warriors’ defense again held and forced a punt. The East Bay offense couldn’t move the ball very far and eventually turned it back over to the Eagles on downs.

Edgewood burned off most of the rest of the period prior to punching in a score, a two-yard run by Isaiah Harrison, with just under two minutes to play. The Warriors’ final series of the game and the season later ended on a pass by quarterback Ryan Ramos to Ditondo that fell incomplete.

“We had a great year. Our guys went through a lot of adversity, coming together from two different teams after we regionalized,” said Proulx, referring to the merger, which brought together the Bristol and Warren-Swansea programs this year. “They really came together as a group, came together as a team by the end of the season.”

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