Tyrone overcomes size, cruises past BEA

Ron Bracken

WINGATE — For a little while at least, bigger was better here Friday night.

CDT photo/Michelle Bixby

Tyrone’s Levi Reihart, left, slips out of the grasp of Bald Eagle Area’s Coleman Hoffman during the Golden Eagles’ 35-6 win on Friday in Wingate.

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Bald Eagle Area, with a significant size advantage over Tyrone, jumped out to a 6-0 lead over the favored Golden Eagles.

But it didn’t last long as Tyrone ran off 35 unanswered points in the rain to spoil BEA’s Homecoming, 35-6.

“The first two series we were pathetic and Bald Eagle really played well,” said Tyrone coach John Franco. “But from the third series on, we played well, especially considering the conditions and their size. Bald Eagle looked good on film. They could easily have been 3-1 coming into this game. We knew we couldn’t take them lightly. We just had to adjust to their size; that really hurt us early. They are so big. We had to use our quickness to our advantage.”

BEA missed a golden scoring opportunity the first time it had the ball after recovering an Eric Desch fumble at the Tyrone 27. The Eagles moved to the Tyrone 16 where Kyle Kinley’s 33-yard field goal attempt was unsuccessful.

After holding Tyrone on downs, BEA got the ball back on its own 37 and drove to the Tyrone 30 where, Jon Gingrich got loose and took it in for the touchdown. The PAT attempt was no good, leaving the Eagles up 6-0 with 4:32 left in the quarter.

“He’s huge,” Franco said of the 6-foot-2, 225-pound Gingrich. “He’s bigger than our linemen. When he went out, that really hurt them.”

Gingrich sat out the second half with a leg injury.

“Jon does a lot of things for us,” said BEA coach Jack Tobias, who saw his team drop to 0-5. “He’s a smart kid and he’s able to help some of the other kids. He’s a big part of our offense.”

Tyrone answered Gingrich’s touchdown by marching 67 yards in eight plays with Zach Gault slamming in from the 1.

Jared Templeton kicked the PAT to give Tyrone the lead permanently with 26 seconds left in the quarter.

Tyrone forced a BEA punt on the Eagles’ next possession and a bad snap chased Kyle Womer back to the 11 before he was able to get off a 22-yard punt.

Setting up shop on the BEA 32, the Eagles needed only two plays to get on the board as Steve Franco connected with Desch in the right corner of the end zone for a touchdown. Templeton made it 14-6 at the 9:02 mark,

The Golden Eagles (4-1) scored again when they got the ball back and went 58 yards with Levi Reihart circling the right side from 15 yards out. Templeton’s kick moved the score to 21-6 with 5:13 left in the half.

The knockout blow came with 54 seconds left in the half when Desch picked off a Justin Taylor pass and returned it 57 yards for a score. Templeton’s kick made it 28-6.

“After he fumbled in the first quarter he guaranteed me he’d make up for it,” Franco said of Desch. “We were going to get the ball to him one way or the other but the first time he got his hands on the ball he fumbled and I wondered what was I doing.

“That interception was huge. Going in at the half up 21-7 would have been nice but that took the wind out of them. Eric has always been a playmaker for us.”

Tyrone held the Eagles on downs at its own 28 to start the second half before taking off on a 13-play drive that culminated when Reihart got his second touchdown of the night, scoring from the 11. Templeton added the game’s final point with 2:12 to go in the third quarter.

“It’s frustrating,” Tobias said. “If we can come out and play like we did on that one drive, we should be able to do that all of the time. It’s consistency. The next time we had the ball we looked like a different team. Our kids just don’t have a lot of confidence right now. When they drove down and scored, it seemed to take the wind out of our sails.

“I don’t think that interception (return) changed the complexion of the game. They were running the ball, doing what they wanted to do. We had to try to throw the ball to stay in the game and they made a play.”

BEA will go on the road Friday to meet Clearfield.