By Brandon Judeh

sports @vindy.com

NEW MIDDLETOWN

Both the Springfield and Lowellville football teams were coming off huge offensive performances last week and Friday night figured to be a repeat performance.

Unfortunately the Rockets’ blazing offense was extinguished by the cool damp weather as Springfield pulled out a 28–6 victory at home.

The previously unbeaten Rockets (2-1) seemed to fall into a funk after a holding penalty brought back a 79-yard touchdown run by junior Phil Ginnis on their first series.

“We came out on fire at the beginning of the game, when that touchdown got called back that really took a lot of air out of us,” said Lowellville head coach Jeff D’Altorio. “But Springfield did a great job of shutting our spread offense and hurry up offense down, I have to give credit to them, they deserved to win.”

The Tigers (2-1) did a tremendous job of holding the Rockets in check. Springfield held Lowellville to 190 yards of offense.

”Coming into the game we wanted to get ahead of them a little bit and force them to pass,” said Springfield head coach Sean Guerriero. “For us to play like we did, to come up with the same effort defensively as we did last week was terrific.”

On the offensive side the night belonged to Tigers junior quarterback Hunter Snyder.

Snyder, also a catcher on the Tigers’ state runner-up baseball team, rushed for 110 yards and three touchdowns.

“Last week, both of these teams combined for more than 700 yards of offense, so coming into tonight we knew we were going to have a big challenge,” Snyder said. “Both teams battled hard in the first quarter, but after we got a score in the second quarter things really opened up for us.”

The quarterback, who also passed for 87 yards, kicked the scoring off mid-way through the second quarter when he busted through the Lowellville defense for a 10-yard touchdown.

“After that score our defense did a tremendous job of keeping them in check,” Snyder said. “We knew coming in that we were going to have to stop their running game, because they have four fantastic backs.”

Snyder also had touchdowns of 1 and 3 yards.

The lone Lowellville touchdown came in the third quarter when Alex Harklerode scored on a 1-yard quarterback keeper.

Lowellville defensive lineman Nick Micco had nine tackles. Wide receiver Van Vanover came up with a huge 43-yard catch to set up the Harklerode touchdown.

Vanover finished with a game-high 76 yards receiving.

Springfield’s Anthony Scandy rushed for 34 yards and added a score. Senior tight end Mark Schuler led the Tigers with 53 receiving yards.

D’Altorio says that he plans on working on the simple things in this coming week’s practice.

“We are going to get back to the basics and fix some things, we have a good football team and I really think we are going to be fine.”