ROYERSFORD — If Steve Rice and his Spring-Ford football teammates didn't already realize they would have a fight on their hands in Friday night's Pioneer Athletic Conference contest against Boyertown, the Bears wasted no time getting that message across.

 

Boyertown scored touchdowns on its first two possessions, and not even 30 unanswered points by the Rams could seem to shake off the Bears.

 

In fact, deep into the fourth quarter the Bears were only down one possession as they drove into Spring-Ford territory.

 

"We knew we had to step up there and make a big stop to help our offense out,' said Rice, a junior linebacker.

 

That's exactly what the Rams defense did, holding on downs with a little more than six minutes remaining and tacking on a couple of big-play touchdowns to close out a 44-22 victory at Coach McNelly Stadium.

 

With Spring-Ford up 30-22, Rice and Connor Crawford combined for a fourth-down sack of Boyertown quarterback Lawrence Garnett, and two plays later Spring-Ford quarterback Brandon Leacraft hooked up with receiver Brandon Barone for a back-breaking 51-yard TD.

 

Ted Dylinski returned an interception for another score in the final minute as the Rams improved to 2-1 in league play and 2-2 overall.

 

"We'll take the win,' Spring-Ford coach Chad Brubaker said. "But we just have to play better. We're still inconsistent at times.'

 

Spring-Ford's Leacraft rebounded from a nightmarish outing in last week's 20-7 loss at Perkiomen Valley to throw for a career-high 280 yards — completing passes to nine different receivers — and four touchdowns; Barone hauled in eight receptions for 135 yards and two scores; and Rice recovered two fumbles as part of a defensive effort that posted four takeaways.

 

Boyertown (1-2, 1-3) got two TD runs by Garnett, four catches for 48 yards by Justin Siejk and a solid power game that amassed 187 rushing yards — but two lost fumbles and two interceptions proved to be too much to overcome against the turnover-free Rams, which amassed 451 yards of total offense.

 

"I just think at times we blew the momentum with those turnovers,' first-year Boyertown coach George Parkinson said. "We had them on their heels a little bit, and that's the thing that irks me the most. We try to preach playing penalty-free, fumble-free, turnover-free football, and it just frustrates me that we continue to do that (turn the ball over). Give credit to Spring-Ford, that's a good football team and they played well, but we also beat ourselves tonight as well.

 

"Before we came out, I said to them in the locker room, ' I know you can stay with these guys physically. But we also needed to win the mental game, and we didn't get that done.'

 

Nonetheless, the Bears came out firing from the get-go — getting a 38-yard TD run by Dan Heller on their third play from scrimmage and a 1-yard scoring run from Garnett with 6:03 left in the first quarter to take an eye-opening 14-0 lead.

Spring-Ford got on the board on Owen Gulati's 20-yard field goal with 2:13 left in the opening period before the Rams' high-octane offense finally started to heat up.

 

First, Leacraft found Danny Matthews for a 14-yard scoring strike three plays into the second quarter.

 

Then, a Rice fumble recovery on the Boyertown 18 led to a 4-yard TD run by sophomore Matt Gibson (15 carries, 102 yards) that put the Rams up to stay at 17-14 with 8:51 left in the second quarter.

 

And, finally, the 5-10, 165-pound Matthews took a short pass over the middle from Leacraft on a fourth-and-5 play and turned it into a 32-yard catch-and-run TD 2:12 before the half that sent the Rams into the locker room up 23-14.

 

"We tried to spread the ball around and got to ball to different people tonight,' Brubaker said. "That's what we try to do.'

Spring-Ford appeared on its way to a rout with an impressive drive to open the second half that culminated in a 13-yard TD pass from Leacraft to Barone that extended the lead to 30-14.

 

The Bears, however, weren't quite finished.

 

"I feel that if we play disciplined football, we can play with anyone,' Parkinson said.

 

Boyertown showed that by answering with a 13-play march highlighted by Mike Murphy's 26-yard run and capped by Garnett's 7-yard TD run and subsequent conversion run that cut the deficit to 30-22 with 3:18 left in the third.

 

That's how it stayed until midway through the final period, when the Bears strung together three first downs and had a first-and-10 from the Rams 36 to set the stage for the key series of the game.

 

After procedure penalty set the Bears back five yards, Crawford and Tim Rudderow combined to corral Garnett for a 2-yard gain. Tim Vu then delivered a pop to Garnett on a 2-yard gain on second down. Brendan Zimmie brought Garnett down for no gain on the third-and-11 sequence, and Rice and Crawford tag-teamed for the sack and 4-yard loss on fourth down.

"The key for us was just sticking to our assignments; just doing what we know,' Rice said.

 

"Give our kids credit for hanging in there and coming back, but we obviously have to come out better than that,' said Brubaker.

 

NOTES

Leacraft completed a whopping 24-for-38 passes. "We've been stressing progressions with him, and he did a better job with that tonight,' Brubaker said. "We've just got to continue to improve there.' ... Bryce Dorsey hit Zach Hare for a 29-yard completion on a successful Spring-Ford fake punt from its own 40 late in the third quarter. ... Alex Nagy had an interception for Spring-Ford, which got two and a half sacks from Zimmie and one from Rudderow. ... Garnett finished with 46 rushing yards, with Hunter Vogels (44) and Heller (40) also contributing to a balanced attack.