Strong second half leads Newport over Halifax

The Newport football team dominated the second half to pull away and post a solid 42-7 victory in Halifax on Oct. 11.

The Buffaloes exploded out of the halftime locker room and forcefully took control. First, they covered 60 yards on four fast plays to break a 7-7 tie as Landon Cigic took a counter play for a 32-yard score. Dylan Vadasz blocked a punt to setup a 5-yard Trevin Arnold to Justin Still crossing route for a touchdown and the Buffaloes never looked back.

"There were some little things we cleaned up at halftime and our kids were able to do a really good job (adjusting)," said Buffalo skipper Todd Rothermel, who notched his 99th career victory. "Then we hit them with a counter and that is what popped. (Halifax) was blitzing into what we typically do at the tight end and wing, so we hit them with the counter coming backside and were able to score on it, which opened up a lot more stuff. The blocked punt is a huge momentum swing as well. Those two scores I thought pretty much slammed the door. You could see Halifax's body language go down and our kids were getting excited."

"The blocked punt gave (Newport) great field position and it just snowballed from there," said Halifax headman Roy Wall. "It has been the story of our season, we self destruct. They did their job, we didn't do ours."

Junior Dalton Kratzer led the offensive charge, galloping his way to 101 yards on 12 totes while delivering three touchdowns.

"It felt really good, I just give all the credit to the lineman, I mean they just keep up the good work and block for me," said a jubilant Kratzer. "After that first week where I got hurt, we hit a downhill fall, but once we got through that, we started getting better, playing as a team. Once we beat Milton Hershey something changed in us and we just got better."

Senior receiver Adian Crockett turned career highs of four catches for 107 yards. Zach Bates rushed for 73 yards on 10 carries while Cigic efficiently churched out 52 yards on four. In all, the Buffaloes stampeded their way to 375 yards of offense. Arnold completed nine of 15 passes for 145 yards and scored on a 9-yard keeper.

"Arnold made some nice throws tonight. The one he threw to Justin (Still) was as in an extremely tight window, he did a really nice job getting it in there to him," said Rothermel. "He was really decisive on his touchdown run, Crockett was open, but slipped. He made up his mind he needed to take off and run, it was nice to see him be decisive and take off."

The defense did its part as well, playing phenomenally well all night. The unit, which was giving up 344.6 yards per game coming in, pinned down the Wildcats to a mere 75 yards, the lowest total surrendered in 74 games. (East Juniata managed just 23 yards of offense as the Buffaloes' triumphed 38-7 in their 2017 season opener.) They were downright miserly on the ground, forcing 14 negative yardage plays as the 'Cats posted (-29) net yards rushing.

"(Newport's) defense played great," acknowledged Wall. "We couldn't block them, we couldn't run the ball. If we tried to run the ball, they packed the box, if we tried to throw, they got pressure on us. Give Rothermel and (assistant coach) George Miskinis a lot of credit; they had a great defensive game plan."

Justin Still delivered a pair of sacks and tackles-for-loss while Ethan Grove rang up seven stops, three for loss and a sack. Vadasz also registered a sack as well as a pair tackles for loss and five stops overall.

A Cigic interception led to the first score of the night as Kratzer blasted in from 18 yards out to give Newport an early 7-0 advantage.

The Wildcats evened things up early in the second quarter when Cohen Bechtel intercepted a pass and returned it 36 yards leading to an 18 yard Teegan Carroll to Landen Osenga scoring strike.

The score would hold until halftime as Alan Long's strip sack of Arnold resulted in a big loss and killed a Buffalo chance to take the lead before the break.

"I reminded the kids good things are going to happen and bad things are going to happen," said Rothermel. "We did a better job playing through that today."

Following the halftime adjustments, Newport dominated, scoring on all five of its second half possessions to earn the mercy rule victory.

Newport hosts Upper Dauphin (4-4) this Friday for the final home game of the year. The Trojans are on a 3-game win streak and lead the all-time series 34-24-1. Rothermel will be going for his 100th career win. The game is also senior night which was rescheduled from the Milton Hershey contest due to weather.