BROOKVILLE — With time running out, Trenton Colgan’s pass to Sam Krug in the back of the end zone didn’t fall incomplete. Krug caught the pass with an impressive leaping grab, but he fell out of bounds.
And with that the Brockway Rovers (3-1) won their third straight game, surviving an upset bid by the Brookville Raiders in a 21-14 victory Friday night.
“I knew that they needed this win because they are one of the only three triple-A schools (in District 9), and they’ve already lost one (to St. Marys),” Rovers head coach Jake Heigel said. “The message all week was that they were going to get everything they have, and we did, and they are a good, well-coached football team, and we just made one more play than they did to win the game.
Brockway led 21-0 less than two minutes into the second half when Collin Weir went 19 yards to the end zone one play after Ben Yale recovered a Raiders fumble caused by Madox Decker’s sack of Colgan.
From there, it was the Raiders that finished strong, starting with Parker Kalgren’s 81-yard return of the ensuing kickoff. The Raiders recovered a fumbled Rovers snap on the first play of the fourth quarter and turned that into their second TD nine plays later on Sam Krug’s 21-yard run with 7:29 remaining.
That turned out to be the final points of the game, but the Raiders drove twice deep into Rovers territory after forcing two punts. The first ended on downs at the Rovers’ 28 with 2:17 remaining and the final drive as time ran out started at the Raiders’ 41 and went 10 plays before Colgan’s pass to Krug was out of the back of the end zone.
“That’s two weeks in a row he’s made a catch very similar to that,” Raiders head coach Bill Morrison said of Krug, who caught a TD pass in similar fashion against St. Marys. “We know what he can do, but coach (Kyle) Smith saw something there for that last drive that really helped us out to slow down their pass rush. And then coach (Nick) Nosker did a really good job of keeping the guys calm. We moved the ball downfield and put ourselves in a chance to win. We can’t really ask for much more than that. That’s it’s showing that our kids are out there battling the whole time, and our coaches are too. … We’re in a good spot. It’s just time to kick the door down and get the win.”
The Raiders hung around, especially after Kalgren’s kick return, by slowing down the game and wound up running 18 more plays, 61-43, than the Rovers from scrimmage.
The senior Krug, who had 10 carries and 58 receptions for his career going into the game wound up rushing 81 yards on 26 carries.
“Sammy is a heck of a football player, and we just wanted to get him the ball more often,” Morrison said. “He’s had interest in doing that, and it was something that was kind of like a no-brainer. Whenever we talked about it as a staff, Sammy was all in for it. And kudos to him, because you think Sammy is like this flashy kind of big-play type of kid. He grinded tonight. He played like a running back is supposed to play.”
The Rovers still outgained the Raiders, 232-201, thanks to some big scrambling plays started by quarterback Aiden Patton. On third-and-seven from the Rovers’ 47 on the fourth play of the second quarter, Patton somehow eluded the Raiders pass rush and connected with Caleb Daugherty for a 53-yard TD.
On the next possession, a Patton scramble on third-and-seven from the Raiders’ 44 led to a 27-yard hookup with Daugherty again. Four plays later it was Weir pushing in from one yard out to put the Rovers up 13-0 with 2:33 left in the first half.
Patton completed 7 of 10 passes for 118 yards and the TD. He was hit often and wound up getting sacked three times, with Patton finishing with minus-8 yards on 14 attempts. Weir ran for 88 yards on 12 carries with his two TDs. He had a 67-yard TD run stopped shot due to an illegal block — he was credited for 31 — in a stalled Rovers drive in the third quarter.
The Rovers were flagged 10 times for 105 yards while the Raiders were whistled 10 times for 75 yards with six defensive offsides calls on the Raiders for jumping on Patton’s clap cadence.
“You continue to see the growth of (Aiden) to be able to kind of take over a game.” Heigel said. “I’ll be interested to see what the yardage total is. With 21 points, it felt like we had way more. We had a lot taken off the board on us, but Colin Weir just adds a different type of versatility to our offense, and it’s a great compliment for Aiden.”
The Rovers host Central Clarion next Friday looking to continue to build some momentum against a worthy foe in the Wildcats despite being 1-3.
“I’m very impressed with the boys, the players, the coaches, everybody,” Heigel said. “There were 1,000 reasons at the end of that game for us to kind of throw our hands up and blame everybody else and we looked ourselves in the eye and said, ‘We have to get it done.’ And we did.”
Morrison liked the fight in his team.
“Three weeks ago, we probably pack up and we’re done (after 21-0), but we didn’t,” he said.
NOTES: Brookville heads to Bradford next Friday. … Colgan finished 12-for-23 for 102 yards with Kalgren catching four balls for 51 yards. Morrison: “Parker showed us all camp his explosiveness and Parker is a kid that has a thick lower half, and he’s kid who we’d like to get the ball to more, but he’s done a great job on our punt returns. He’s done a great job on our kickoff returns. He’s really matured and kind of became more of a football player who loves baseball. … Patton finished 7-for-10 for 118 yards with Daugherty catching three passes for 79 yards.