Fleetwood loses to Garden Spot in high school football

Sep. 23—Fleetwood allowed Garden Spot to score the game's first 20 points Friday night.

The Tigers had problems with Spartans quarterback Kyle Harting, who threw six touchdown passes and ran for 157 yards and another score.

But even with all that, Fleetwood wasn't that far from staying with visiting and unbeaten Garden Spot in what became a 48-21 loss in a Lancaster-Lebanon Section 3 game

Perhaps just two plays away, in fact.

The first, with the Tigers (0-2, 2-3) down 27-14, came on Fleetwood's last drive of the first half.

On a second-and-3 from the Spartans' 23, Jack Riffle hit a wide-open Tristin McFarland for a touchdown that would have made it a one-possession game with 40 seconds left.

Instead, the officials called an illegal shift penalty on the Tigers. Riffle was sacked for a 14-yard loss on the next play and the drive stalled.

"It wasn't an illegal shift," Fleetwood coach Steve Pangburn said. "Our guy's asking if he's on the line of scrimmage. He gets a thumbs up and a thumbs down."

The second play came on the first drive of the second half.

After overcoming an 11-yard loss on the first play, Fleetwood drove to the Garden Spot 48. On first down, Jason Petion couldn't handle a backward pass and the Spartans (2-0, 5-0) recovered the fumble.

Garden Spot scored on the next play when Harting connected on a 59-yard pass to Jace Conrad to make 34-14.

"We needed that one," Pangburn said of the second half's opening drive. "We definitely needed that one. It's just for momentum, morale. You score on that, we play better defense because everyone's confidence is up."

Those mistakes seemed to deflate the Tigers.

Fleetwood was unable to get a first down on its next two drives, and Garden Spot scored on its next two possessions to take a 48-14 lead.

"We had moments of momentum," Pangburn said. "We just didn't sustain that momentum. There were moments. It wasn't long enough. You can't get down 20 points. We won the second quarter so we went into halftime with some momentum there. We just didn't capture it."

Garden Spot grabbed the momentum early on, scoring on its first three drives to go up 20-0.

Harting ran for a 57-yard touchdown, then threw TD passes of 34 yards to Austin Hurst and 22 yards to Trenton Hoober.

Fleetwood got a spark when Brate Maddocks intercepted Harting near midfield and returned it to the 6. Riffle then hit Landon Hare for a 6-yard TD pass on third down.

Harting led the Spartans on an 80-yard drive, one he capped with a 3-yard pass to Hoober, before Fleetwood responded with a 69-yard scoring drive that Czion Brickle ended with a dazzling 14-yard run to make it 27-13.

After forcing a punt, the Tigers appeared in business.

Then came the illegal shift penalty and the turnover on the opening drive of the second half.

Harting finished 10-of-17 passing for 207 yards and ran 11 times for 157 yards. He had nine carries for 153 yards in the first half.

"We made his job easy," Pangburn said. "You know, we got a cushion popped way too many times. Unfortunately, we had some injuries. We had to play some young guys and that's what happens."

Riffle completed 18-of-34 passes for 201 yards.

After opening 2-0, the Tigers have lost three straight, but two of those losses are to unbeaten teams, including Twin Valley in Week 4.

Next up is a non-league game next Saturday at Kennard-Dale, which is 2-3 following a 38-20 win against West York Friday.

"I don't want them looking ahead," Pangburn said, "but as coach I looked over all 10 games. We're through the toughest patch of our schedule. We've got some winnable ballgames coming up. We got to start piling some wins because we've piled some losses."