Pottsville falls to Shamokin Area in season opener
Pottsvile's JuJu Bainbridge (5) tries to avoid a Shamokin Area defender during Friday night's game. (Photo by Charlie Roth)
COAL TOWNSHIP — It wasn’t the outcome first-year coach Mike Brennan would have liked.
It was, however, the effort he wants to see.
Squaring off against a very good Shamokin Area team in the season opener on the Indians’ home turf at Kemp Memorial Stadium on Friday night, Brennan’s Pottsville Crimson Tide squad dropped a 27-13 decision.
It was the Tide’s play, however, after falling behind 20-0 with a little over four minutes remaining in the first half, that gives Brennan and his young squad hope as the season progresses.
“Got behind and it was too little, too late,” Brennan said. “But I was proud of the way we competed.
“I was proud of them. We have a lot of youth, a lot of young guys who were starting for the first time.”
After a scoreless first quarter when neither team was able to do much of anything on the offensive side, Shamokin Area found its stride.
A 42-yard touchdown run by sophomore quarterback Logan Steele on a fourth-and-1 play to open the second quarter got the Indians on the board.
Two plays later, following an interception and 30-yard return by linebacker Liam Montgomery, Shamokin Area got on the board again when Steele scored on a 4-yard sneak to make it 14-0.
Then, after forcing a three-and-out on Pottsville’s next possession, the Indians put together a 14-play, 85-yard drive that was capped when Steele hit wideout Benjamin Delbaugh with a scoring toss from 15 yards out to make it 20-0.
Pottsville, to its credit, didn’t quit and instead responded with a 14-play, 80-yard drive to get back into the game.
JuJu Bainbridge got the Crimson Tide on the board, plunging in from two yards out with 20 seconds remaining in the half, cutting the deficit to 20-7 at the intermission.
Then, after a Derek Watkins interception on the fourth play of the third quarter, the Tide went to work.
On the second play after the pick, sophomore quarterback Andrew Allen found wideout Tsirell Curry open behind the Shamokin secondary and the duo connected for 69 yards and a touchdown that cut the deficit to 20-13 with plenty of football still to be played.
“We got it back to one score,” Brennan said. “We needed that one big play to get it back to even and we couldn’t come up with that.
“I was proud of them. To make it a one-score game after being behind by three was going in the right direction.”
For Indians head coach Marc Persing, he recalled last season when his team followed strong first-half performances by falling off in the final two quarters.
“I had flashbacks to last year,” Persing said. “But the message we’ve been conveying to these kids is that we need to learn how to win these games.
“We think back to last year when we’d play dominant in the first half, then have lapses in the second half. I couldn’t be more proud of the way these guys responded to adversity.”
And respond, the Indians did.
With a punishing ground game that totaled 316 yards on the night, they maintained that seven-point lead until late in the fourth quarter when a 4-yard scoring run by Steele pushed the advantage up to the final margin.
Of that rushing total, Steele accounted for 104 on 18 rushes, while bruising fullback Za’Kem Clinton, a 6-foot-1, 225-pound junior, added 114 yards on just 13 carries. Of that total, 86 came on nine second-half rushes.
“(Clinton) was hard to handle,” Brennan said. “He had just enough speed on the edge, and just enough power and size.”
For the Tide, Allen connected on 13-of-27 passes, good for 160 yards. Curry hauled in four of those passes for 119 yards, including the long touchdown.
“We’ll go back to the drawing board, get better and we’ll be better for next week,” Brennan said.
