By Stephen Ham

Special to the Leader

   The Red Storm football team defeated the Sanford Redskins 12-7 on a rainy Friday night in Sanford, in a game that was controlled by defense, and marred by fumbles on a slippery field. In the end though, it goes in the win column, and Scarborough moves to 2-0 for the first time in it’s Class A history with the victory. 

 Head Coach David Sterling was pleased to see the program moving forward. 

  “It’s been really good for these young men. They’ve been waiting for this program to turn the corner and we’ve started it, but we only have as many wins now as we had last season so we’ve got to put our nose to the grindstone and go to work,” he said.

  The Scarborough defense was really the story of this game. The line got penetration on nearly every play, and simply didn’t allow Sanford many opportunities. The game’s first score was set up when Scarborough defensive end Kris Gergler blocked a Redskin punt, giving the Storm the ball on the Sanford 14 yard line. Three plays later, quarterback Kyle Kelly dove over from the 1, giving Scarborough the lead 6-0 with 5:32 left in the first quarter. 

Seemingly every member of the Red Storm defense stepped up during the game. Brian Woodbury, Phil Christian, Zack Bean, and Matt Duquette all made big hits at critical times to stop Sanford drives and force fumbles. Garrett Alofs made two first half interceptions and Sean Northgraves had one to kill Redskin possessions. Billy Wahrer and Spencer Jordan both made huge stops on key Sanford returns. 

  The problem with tight games in bad weather is that sometimes all it takes to win is one big play. Sanford got that play when a pass slipped through two Scarborough defenders hands for a 52-yard pass play to the Red Storm 5. Sanford scored on the next play and with 3:03 left in the third quarter the Redskins led 7-6, despite doing almost nothing on offense all night.

 Both teams struggled with increasingly difficult playing conditions as the rain increased in intensity. There were a multitude of fumbles on both sides, as well as punts that went sideways and passes that slipped out of quarterbacks hands errantly. Red Storm center Luke Bogdanovich did a great job with Kelly to avoid any fumbles on snaps given the slick footballs.

   “It was tough,” Sterling said. “We knew right from the beginning that we needed to possess the football. Sanford is a very good ball team, but we possessed the football more often and ran right at people.”

   The Scarborough offense stuck to it’s game plan throughout the night, repeatedly hitting the Redskin interior line in an attempt to gain yardage with it’s bigger offensive line. The Redskins hung tough, and showed that while they were smaller, they were also quicker, and didn’t allow any long runs all night.

 Sterling commented on the offense’s struggles, saying, “We still have an offense that’s trying to gel. We lost our starting quarterback back in Westbrook and we’re still trying to fill some holes on our offense, and hopefully we’ll have that fixed by next week [against Thornton Academy].”

 The winning drive began when E.J. Conceison recovered a fumbled punt return on the Sanford 25 yard line with a minute left in the third quarter. As the final quarter of play began, Brendan Ham took the Red Storm offense on his shoulders with two consecutive ‘must have’ first down runs on fourth down. He then blasted through the middle to the Sanford 3, but suffered an apparent arm injury that required a visit from the trainer. After sitting out one play, with the ball on the four-yard line, Ham re-entered the game and immediately took the ball into the end zone with the go ahead score. Scarborough failed on a two point attempt and needed to hold on to its 12-7 lead for the remainder of the game.

 In the final minute of the game, as Sanford drove deep into Scarborough territory in an attempt to win, Gergler again came up with a huge play, this time sacking the quarterback for a loss of 10 yards that put the Redskins in a difficult 4^th and 14 that they were unable to convert on.

 Scarborough’s next game is Friday, Sept. 19 at 7 p.m. in Scarborough.