Elizabeth Forward cruises to easy win over Southmoreland

Tagged under: District 7, Gameday Hub, News

Andrew Schaffer | October 19, 2024

A crucial Interstate Conference matchup turned into a convincing 31-3 Elizabeth Forward win over Southmoreland. “We didn’t talk about it all season, but we all had this game circled, we all knew that this was probably going to be for the conference championship even though we got another game against a tough Mt. Pleasant team next week, we’ll prepare for it, we still have a chip on our shoulder, we lost a couple tight games early, everyone sort of wrote us off a little bit, the last 5 weeks our motto was make a statement” said Coach DeMarco.

Southmoreland got the ball to start the game and on the first play ran a trick play down to the Elizabeth Forward 30 yard line. After that the drive stalled and Southmoreland turned the ball over on downs.

Elizabeth Forward started their first drive on their own 31 yard line and had a good drive going and were inside the Southmoreland 40 yard line. However that drive stalled and they turned the ball over on downs.

The first points of the game occurred on Southmoreland’s next drive on a 26 yard field goal by Jake Kaylor which made the score 3-o Southmoreland with 46 seconds in the first quarter.

Early on in the second quarter Elizabeth Forward tied it up at 3 on a field goal by Luke Holdren.

Both teams had their chances throughout the second quarter but late in the second quarter Elizabeth Forward came up with a nice drive and ended on a 19 yard touchdown run by Charlie Nigut. That made the score 10-3 Elizabeth Forward with 57 seconds left before halftime. That would be the score at half. “It was definitely a momentum swing going into halftime” said Coach DeMarco.

Southmoreland tried a surprise onside kick to start the second half and it wasn’t successful and Elizabeth Forward started with good field position at the 50 yard line. They would capitalize on that when Charlie Nigut scored on a 3 yard run. That made the score 17-3 Elizabeth Forward with 7:03 in the third quarter.

Nigut was a key player for Elizabeth Forward in the win he had 140 rushing yards on 29 carries and also had 53 yards receiving. “What can you say, three more touchdowns tonight, kid is tough as nails one of the best players I’ve been around, I’ve been doing this for a long time and he’s one of my all time favorites” said Coach DeMarco.

Southmoreland got past midfield on the next drive but after that the drive was stalled by several penalties which forced them to punt it away. The score at the end of the third quarter was 17-3 Elizabeth Forward.

Early on in the fourth quarter Elizabeth Forward extended their lead on Charlie Nigut’s third touchdown of the game this one being a 2 yard run. That made the score 24-3 Elizabeth Forward with 10:27 left in the game. “Our coaches put up a great game plan for us and our offensive line blocked a great game for me and I can’t thank them enough and our guys came out and played our hearts out” said Nigut.

Before the game ended Elizabeth Forward added one last touchdown when Andrew Grese scored on an 8 yard run making the final score 31-3 Elizabeth Forward.

Ryan Messina also had a big game for Elizabeth Forward he was 12 of 16 for 185 yards and had around 60 yards rushing. “We wanted to start up the run game, it wasn’t going good at the start, so we had to setup with the pass, some of the situations were third and long and we converted them because of my pass game, I’m happy and I’m proud of this guy right here AJ Grese he came in clutch when we needed him to” said Messina.

Next Week Elizabeth Forward travels to Mt. Pleasant where they clinch the Interstate Conference outright with a win. Southmoreland travels to Greensburg Salem.

Follow PA Football News on Twitter @PaFootballNews