Frontier blanks Paden City in shortened contest
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NEW MATAMORAS -- On a night where their offense may not have been quite sharp as they would have liked, the Frontier Cougar defense more than made up for it Friday night in a 34-0 win over Paden City.
The Cougars defense picked off four passes, completed a safety and limited the Wildcats to just eight total yards of offense in a game called early in the third quarter with Paden City down to just nine healthy football players.
"We scored right off the bat pretty easily and then I think we got a little bit lethargic offensively and didn't play quite as hard or as well as we can," said Frontier head coach Russ Morris. "I thought defensively we played excellent and I'm proud of our effort."
Frontier got on the board quickly when they marched 50-yards on just six plays on the opening drive of the game capped by a one-yard touchdown plunge by senior quarterback J.D. Schmidt.
Schmidt came up with a score on the defensive side of the ball to increase the Cougar lead to 14-0 when he pounced on a fumble in the end zone after an errant Paden City snap deep in their own territory.
After the initial drive, the Frontier offense sputtered a bit as they went three consecutive possessions without coming up with a score before the defense rose to the occasion once again when they took advantage of yet another Wildcat bad snap.
Parker Higgins recovered the football in the end zone for Paden City but was unable to get out before being tackled by a swarm of Cougar tacklers for a safety.
The Frontier offense got going after the Wildcats punt as it took them just two plays to travel 35 yards with junior Lucas Cox scampering in on a 20-yard run to increase the lead to 22-0.
Cox scored again on the next Cougar possession as he hauled in a 16-yard touchdown pass from Schmidt with less than two minutes to play in the half.
The Frontier defense put an exclamation point on a huge second quarter when Schmidt came up with the fourth Cougar interception of the half and rambled 38 yards for a touchdown to give his team a 34-0 lead at the break.
Paden City came into the game with barely a dozen healthy players and were down to just 11 players to start the second half when yet another injury forced the game to be canceled.
Schmidt led the way for the Cougars by completing 7-of-13 pass attempts for 63 yards to go along with the pair of defensive scores while Tanner Bills rushed for a team-high 84 yards on four carries while also leading the Cougars in receiving with four catches for 46.
Cox accumulated his two touchdowns on just four touches in the game while Walker Hendershot came up with a pair of interceptions.
"My hats off to Paden City because they are trying to play football and they came over here with 12 or 13 guys and despite some guys getting banged up they played hard," said Morris, who pushed his career coaching record past the .500 mark (77-76) with the win. "I've got a lot of respect for them for trying to play and if a kid wants to play football then they ought to have that opportunity."
The Cougars improved to 2-0 with the win with their first road game on tap next Friday when they travel to Beallsville.