DANVILLE — The final numbers on the scoreboard at Ironmen Stadium were of no concern to Montoursville head coach J.C. Keefer on Friday night. The 52-26 loss to Danville was one thing. The loss of composure by his football team which catapulted the Ironmen to the lopsided win was of far more concern to Keefer.

Montoursville was flagged for five personal foul penalties in the third quarter last night. Two of them came on one play and one resulted in the ejection of a player for allegedly throwing a punch. And the downpour of penalty flags set into motion a chain of events which saw the Warriors go from trailing by just five points 5 minutes into the third quarter to staring at a 30-plus point deficit late in the fourth quarter.

Peyton Persing scored six touchdowns for Danville on Friday night, three rushing and three receiving, as the Ironmen totaled 461 yards of offense and took control of the race in District 4 Class AAA.

“That’s not the score,” Keefer said pointing to the purple scoreboard some 60 yards away. “If we keep our composure and continue to play football, I’m excited to see what would happen here in the second half. But we’re a young team who is still getting better. I’m just so disappointed in what transpired in the second half. And it’s on both sides. I’m not letting (Danville) off the hook. We have to be better than that and not react to what they’re doing and just keep playing football.”

The Warriors responded to a nine-point halftime deficit just as Keefer had hoped they would when the third quarter began. They scored on their first offensive possession when Hunter Shearer found a wide open Zac Caseman for a 29-yard touchdown pass to cut Danville’s lead to 24-19 after the two-point conversion failed.

Then the defense put Montoursville in a spot to get the ball back again, stuff rushing attempts on first and second down from the Danville 39. But on the second stop, the Warriors were hit with two personal foul penalties after the play, the last of which came with the ejection of a player.

Immediately the sideline began to unravel with players barking at the officials and emotions boiling over. Keefer could see it happening. And two plays later when Montoursville was hit with another personal foul penalty setting up Danville with first down at the Montoursville 12-yard line, Keefer huddled his entire team trying to keep them composed and settled.

Two plays later Persing scored on an 8-yard touchdown run and kicker Peyton Riley followed with a successful onside kick which the Ironmen recovered. Persing scored his third rushing touchdown on a 2-yard run five plays and one personal foul later. Staring at a 38-19 deficit with all the momentum on the home sideline and the Warriors still trying to regain its composure, a matchup of the top two teams in District 4 AAA seemed as if it was over.

“They’re so emotional and this sport is such an emotional game, they’re not listening to me. It’s a helpless feeling because you can see it transpiring and you can’t pull them in,” Keefer said. “That changed the whole complexion of the game. We have them third-and-long and I would love to see what happens because I think we’re in a ball game.”

“That was when things started hitting the fan,” Persing said. “They had two penalties on one play and we ended up scoring a touchdown and that was where we won the game.”

To that point it had been exactly the kind of game you’d expect from the two top teams in the district. It was punch-counter punch after both teams stumbled through mistakes and missed opportunities early.

Danville found every way they could to get the ball in Persing’s hands, including using him as a Wildcat quarterback for the second week in a row. The 5-foot-10, 173-pound burner carried 18 times for 81 yards and a trio of touchdowns to help spark the running game to a season-high 273 yards.

And when he wasn’t running the ball, sophomore quarterback K.J. Riley was finding him running open in the secondary. He caught six passes for 122 yards and three more touchdowns. His trio of touchdowns covered 28, 39 and 27 yards.

“You can see how electric the kid is with the ball in his hands. So when you have a weapon like that, you have to fire it,” Danville coach Jim Keiser said. “We held off the first couple weeks with him because we thought we could do some other things without him to keep him fresh and it’s really paying off right now.”

“He’s just a stud,” Keefer said. “I thought we had a good game plan. But he’s going to be open and he’s going to get his catches. I thought we could keep their explosive plays down and limit them to two or three, and they had more than that. He’s phenomenal.”