BY JEFF FALK

 FREDERICKSBRG – Everybody wants to win. Everybody wants to compete. Everybody wants to lead with their best foot.

 But if you’re opponent is going to get better, then you better make darn sure you’re getting better too.

 On a warm Friday night at Fred Gahres Stadium, Annville-Cleona bested Northern Lebanon 49-20 in a clash of Lebanon County football clubs that are improving. The Little Dutchmen raced out to a 35-0 lead in the second quarter, before the Vikings displayed some signs of life.

 On the strength of 338 yards on the ground, Northern Lebanon out gained Annville-Cleona 440 total yards to 357. Little Dutchmen senior running back Trevor Porche carried 15 times for 124 yards and three first-half touchdowns.

 The result evened Annville-Cleona’s overall mark to 2-2 and upped its Lancaster-Lebanon Section Three record to 2-1. The setback dropped Northern Lebanon to 0-4 overall and 0-3 in the section.

 “I’m not pleased with our progress,” said Annville-Cleona head coach Matt Gingrich. “We are not paying enough attention to details. We do not have the attention it takes to win a section. It’s got to get better.

 “We’re still not playing for us,” continued Gingrich. “Tonight was better. We were playing more for each other.”

  “We did some things well,” said Northern Lebanon head coach Roy Wall. “We did more things well. But we didn’t play 160 snaps. We played ten good snaps, ten pretty good snaps, not very many average snaps and a lot of bad snaps.

 “The thing that stood out was that the pass protection held up,” Wall continued. “Nate Leedy-Reidel played his heart out. Also, Ethan (Borcky) took a step toward being a better quarterback. He’s doing some good things. We’ve just got to continue to build.”

 The outcome was never really in doubt, after Annville-Cleona tallied a trio of opening-quarter touchdowns.

 The first came 3:37 into the contest, on a 13-yard touchdown scamper by Porche, but only after a Viking penalty on fourth down had kept the drive alive. Two minutes and 19 seconds later, Annville-Cleona turned a Northern Lebanon fumble into quarterback Jeremy Bours’ 32-yard scoring run and a 14-0 advantage.

 Then, on the final play of the first quarter, Porche ran one in from seven yards away to culminate a six-play, 98-yard A-C posession. The big play in that drive was a 59-yard passing collaboration from Bours to Cade Horning.

  “We needed one pretty bad,” said Gingrich. “I was very pleased, except for their possession right before halftime and their possession right after halftime. The offense played well. Northern Lebanon has gotten better as the year has gone on. They played better than they did on film.

 “This is my sixth year of coaching, and we were on the opposite end of this game the first four years,” added Gingrich. “If I were talking about it, I’d say they’re still on the upper end. It’s definitely a rivalry. It’s a county game.”

  “We’re relatively young,” said Wall. “We have to learn how to win. That’s the big thing.

 “We’ve got to stop making mistakes,” Wall added. “We’re literally playing 11 against 22. It’s not one guy. We’ve got to play smart football. We can’t give them extra downs and extra yards.”

  Thanks to a pair of touchdowns in a 2:26 span of the second quarter, the Little Dutchmen threatened to take a 35-0 lead to the locker room. Porche scored from four yards away and Horning made a spectacular 20-yard catch of a Bours’ aerial in the right corner of the end zone.

 But Northern Lebanon struck on the next-to-last play of the second quarter, when Borcky found Chase Bressler with a 68-yard touchdown toss to make it 35-6. The Vikings drove the second-half kickoff 67 yards in 17 plays to get a Borcky-to-Tyler Lewis six-yard scoring strike.

 “Our biggest issue is that our third- and fourth-and-long conversion-percentage against is like 90 or 95 percent,” said Gingrich. “It was our fault. We’ve got to get better at that. It was more of a technical issue. There was not a ‘stepping off the gas’.

 “There’s a couple of things I don’t like defensively,” Gingrich added. “We give up long plays more than any team I’ve seen in my entire life. And we’re not as physical as we should be.”

 “We want to keep competing,” said Wall. “We kept competing the whole game. Our numbers are up from the beginning of the season. We do the best we can with what we have to work with.”

 Annville-Cleona took the starch out of the Vikings’ momentum with a six-play, 64-yard drive that ended with Rogan Harter’s ten-yard TD run, with 1:43 left in the third quarter. On their next possession, the Little Dutchmen marched 80 yards on 15 snaps, to get Bours’ second rushing touchdown of the evening, one that made it 49-13.

  “It could not have gotten worse,” said Gingrich of some early season ball-handling difficulties. “We spent more time than we needed to, but we had to. It’s something you’ve got to be perfect with. The turnovers have gotten better, but we’re still not clean.”

 “They execute their offense to perfection,” said Wall of the Little Dutchmen. “We had two people on the dive, a guy on the quarterback and a guy on the pitch man. But they execute the crap out of it. They do it well. They don’t deviate. We didn’t slow them down at all.”

 The Annville-Cleona defense limited the Vikings to 25 total yards on the ground. Borcky finished the contest by going 16-for-31 for 332 passing yards.

 Bressler caught four balls for 125 yards and two touchdowns. Leedy-Reidel hauled in another six receptions for 126 yards.

 “They played much better,” said Gingrich of the Vikings. “I was very impressed with that. They put up a great fight.”

 “We’re getting everybody healthy,” said Wall. “The first game, we dressed 15 kids, between injuries and other things. We have a lot of new players, but we got them so late. Every week is a competition. We’ve just got to keep getting better. If we can’t cut down on mistakes, then we’ve got to make changes.”

 To purchase images in this article email jkfalk2005@yahoo.com.

 2019 Annville-Cleona Football Schedule

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2019 Northern Lebanon Football Schedule

 

Date	Opponents	Outcomes
8/23 7:00 pm	Pine Grove at Northern Lebanon	50 8
8/30 7:00 pm	Ephrata at Northern Lebanon	57 18
9/06 7:00 pm	Northern Lebanon at Octorara	0 35
9/13 7:00 pm	Annville-Cleona at Northern Lebanon
9/20 7:00 pm	Elco at Northern Lebanon
9/27 7:00 pm	Northern Lebanon at Pequea Valley
10/04 7:00 pm	Lebanon at Northern Lebanon
10/11 7:00 pm	Lancaster Catholic at Northern Lebanon
10/18 7:00 pm	Northern Lebanon at Columbia
10/25 7:00 pm	Northern Lebanon at Donegal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Lancaster-Lebanon League

 Section Three Standings

 

	League			Overall
	W	L	PCT	W	L	PCT	PS	PA
Lancaster Catholic	3	0	100.00	4	0	100.00	145	65
Donegal	3	0	100.00	3	1	75.00	126	69
Lebanon	2	1	66.67	2	2	50.00	89	72
Ephrata	2	1	66.67	2	2	50.00	129	148
Annville-Cleona	2	1	66.67	2	2	50.00	125	133
Columbia	1	2	33.33	2	2	50.00	118	97
Octorara	1	2	33.33	1	3	25.00	61	62
Elco	1	2	33.33	1	3	25.00	49	69
Pequea Valley	0	3	0.00	0	4	0.00	19	199
Northern Lebanon	0	3	0.00	0	4	0.00	46	191