Sports
Mabank knocks off Van, 21-6
MABANK — A hard-hitting Van team jumped all over the Mabank Panthers in the first half Friday night in Panther Stadium. In fact, Coach Jimmy Cantrell said after the game, “We looked like a pee-wee team out there in the first half.”
After discussing this politely with his team at the half, the Panthers went out and played big-boy football with three impressive third-quarter touchdowns to claim a 21-6 win. Quarterback Jordan Featherston, challenged by flu-like symptoms the whole game, had a miserable first half, completing just two of his passes for 29 yards, and one of those completions was fumbled away.
But as bad as the Panthers were in the first-half of this homecoming game, they were superb in the second half.
The Panthers stopped the Vandals on their first series of the second half, then went to work. The Panther drove 59 yards in six plays with Featherson and Corey Janicke hooking up on 15 -and nine-yard completions, then Darius Robertson completed the drive with a two-yard TD pass from Featherston.
The Panthers scored again in the latter part of the quarter when Darius Robertson found himself all alone deep in the end zone to complete the final two yards of that drive.
Si Fridely caught a 30-yard touchdown pass later in the quarter from Featherston, and before the period ended, Janicke caught a beautiful 60-yard scoring pass from Featherston.
So the quarterback who was roughed up by a virus and a nasty-tempered Vandal team in the first 24 minutes, owned the Vandals in the second half with 3 TD passes.
The Panther defense, which has carried this team through the first three games, struggled mightily in the first 24 minutes to keep the Vandals out of the end zone. They yielded one touchdown when Van quarterback Michael Gates found Ryan Parham wide open down the left sideline.
The Panthers could only make one first down the rest of the half, that coming on a 17 yard completion to Trey Fernandez.
The game had a scary moment in the first half when the Panthers’ All-District linebacker Nolan Duncan suffered a neck injury, and lay motionless on the side of the field for almost half an hour. But late word was that Duncan, who was air-flighted to East Texas Medical Center Tyler, had movement in all his extremities and was doing well.
How rough was this game? Two other Mabank linebackers were injured: Cam Cantrell sufffer a concussion, and Dustin Schultz, who doubles as a running back, suffered leg cramps, putting three Mabank linebackers out of the game at various times.
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