HORSHAM – The rainy weather was no issue for the North Penn Knights as they flattened the Hatboro-Horsham Hatters 42-21 Friday night.
The Knights (4-0; 4-3) got rolling early with a touchdown five minutes into the first quarter on a pass from Austin Shearer to Nick Wright. The Knights continued the scoring onslaught with Nyfease West carrying the ball and five Hatter defenders across the goal line on a seven yard touchdown run. West’s touchdown was set up by a 26 yard run by Kris Akins. Before the end of the first quarter, Justin Hudimac ran 20 yards putting the Knights in scoring position and Lewis Dickson ran 2 yards to make the score 21-0.
The Knight’s defense was also hard at work shutting down the Hatters offense and not allowing them to cross their own 40 yard line in the first quarter. In stopping the run, Coach Dick Beck stated that “the defensive tackles did a good job of fighting off pressure.”
The Hatters finally got on the board late in the second quarter to make the score 21-7. The Knights answered back quickly scoring less than 20 seconds later with a 61 yard run by West to make the score 28-7. The Hatboro-Horsham turf played to the Knight’s strong running game. “It was easier [to run] because we usually run on grass and we don’t get as much traction; I felt faster tonight,” added West.
Before halftime, the Hatters started to pick up some momentum connecting on an 85 yard touchdown pass to make the score 28-14. The Hatters defense stopped the Knights and the invigorated Hatters drove the ball down the field. This momentum was stopped when Dickson picked off a Hatter pass with less than 2 minutes remaining. The Knights then ended any thought of a Hatter comeback with Shearer connecting with Luke Berry on a screen pass for a touchdown to finish the half with a 35-14 lead.
The second half saw a battle in the trenches with both teams sticking to the running game in the rain. A North Penn touchdown by Berry and a Hatboro touchdown accounted for the balance of the scoring a with a 42-21 final score. On tonight’s game Berry commented “we were making sure we stop the run up the middle and everything fell together on both offense and defense and we came out with a big win.”
Beck is happy with how his once 0-3 team is playing now, and points to continuity as a big part of that.
“I want to make sure we keep our continuity. Up front with the offensive line in the last couple of games we really started to move the ball up the ground with a lot of consistency and I’m really happy about that and tonight we really came off the ball…I’m happy with the way we are running the ball, the offensive linemen are really starting to come off the ball.”
On the teams resurrection after a 0-3 start Beck commented “the coaching staff now has a good feeling about what we are getting good at – what’s our identity. Maybe early we weren’t sure what our identity was.”
The Knights are back in Crawford Stadium Friday night as they take on the Pennridge Rams for North Penn’s 2013 Homecoming Game.
“This is a big game for us because Pennridge took it to us last year – we are looking to set up the showdown…we have to have a good week at practice and we have to be ready and prepared for that,” concluded Beck.