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Montoursville posts second consecutive shutout by beating Milton 36-0

By Jon Gerardi 6 min read

Montoursville opened Friday's game at Memorial Stadium in Montoursville with a nice 10-play drive that began at their own 19 yard line. It culminated with a one-yard touchdown run by Elijah Eck for an early score.

The Warriors' defense held Milton to a three-and-out on the ensuing possession from their own 32 and the Warriors got their hand on the ball and blocked Milton's punt and got the ball back at Milton's 16.

Five plays later, Montoursville punched in another touchdown from a yard out.

It was that quickly that the Warriors went ahead by 14 points and Montoursville never let its foot off the gas, offensively or defensively. The Warriors cruised past Milton in Week 5, securing a 36-0 win at home, the second consecutive shutout victory for the Warriors.

"Defensively we showed up and did a good job executing the game plan," Montoursville coach Reese Holmes said. "Sloppy game, gotta fix some things otherwise, but defense played tough and did what we asked them."

The Warriors were ahead 14-0 with 3:14 left in the first quarter and held a 22-0 lead by halftime when on Montoursville's fourth possession, Eck took a quarterback draw through a hole in the line, cut to his right and went untouched for 65 yards to score a touchdown with 4:34 until halftime.

Eck hurt Milton with his arms and legs. In addition to his two rushing touchdowns in the first half, he also had 210 passing yards and threw a touchdown in the fourth quarter with 5:45 left to put the mercy rule into effect as Montoursville went up, 36-0.

"Elijah is turning into a phenomenal quarterback. He's a sponge. He listens, he wants to learn, he's all about the team. He wants to go out and compete," Holmes said. "He's a competitor. He can run the ball, he can throw the ball, he commands the offense. He's a leader that you want back there."

Milton struggled in the first half moving the ball.

After a blocked punt on its first possession, Milton saw its next three possessions of eight plays, seven plays and six plays all end with punts before a three-play drive concluded the first half.

The Black Panthers had just 61 yards of total offense in the first half as Montoursville's defense limited what the Black Panthers did.

"First half we do what we usually do: we shoot ourselves in the foot. Bobbled snap on the punt, they get the ball inside the 30," Milton coach Matt Wilson said. "We just gotta stop shooting ourselves in the foot."

In the second half, Milton started moving the ball better and put up yardage, but never were able to punch in a touchdown. A few touchdown chances were called back by penalties.

After a 61-yard first half, Milton's Paxton Humphrey stepped in at quarterback after some adjustments in the lineup and finished 7 for 16 for 126 yards and made a number of fantastic throws, including a great dart down the right-hand side of the field to receiver Jhemzuel Felciiano, who caught it and managed to tap both feet before being pushed out of bounds.

"Paxton's a freshman, but he's very smart. He studies the game. He's able to move in the pocket," Wilson said. "So we have a lot of good skilled guys. We're just young and we got to find a way to get drives and sustain drives and not just shoot ourselves in the foot."

Montoursville ended the game with 324 yards of total offense, 210 coming from Eck's arm while the Warriors ran it 29 times for 114 yards. Kaden Kleinman carried it 16 times for 82 yards and had two touchdown runs. His second score from a yard out gave the Warriors a 14-0 lead before his second touchdown came with 36 seconds remaining in the third quarter. Kleinman ran it in from 10 yards out for the 29-0 lead.

"Trying to establish a run game, trying to move the ball on the ground. We can drop back and throw the ball, but we got to do other things just as well," Holmes said. "So yeah, happy with how the kids executed those (drives). Just one play at a time, trying to get through. They're executing just like the defense did. Hats off to our offense, they came through."

Holmes was also glad to see the Warriors' defense all but shut down Milton's running game and force the Black Panthers to throw the ball. Milton ran it 26 times for 69 yards and in the first half had just 34 rushing yards on 17 carries.

"You always wanna stop the run, right? If you can stop the run, you turn a team into a one-dimensional offense. Then we can kind of do what we need to do in pass coverage game, get some pressure on the quarterback," Holmes said. "Had two or three sacks, that was encouraging. So yeah, when you can stop the run and make them one-dimensional, that's something that helps."

Zane Butler and Gavin Bower each had a sack for the Warriors while Milton's Schuyler Humphrey had one.

Milton knew that they had to account for Eck in Friday's matchup, but the Warrior would continue to make plays and hurt Milton.

"I mean our DC does a really good job game planning week to week with teams we play. We know every play, every formation. A lot of times you'll hear us calling it up. Guys just gotta step up and make plays," Wilson said. "Elijah Eck is a phenomenal athlete, we kneew that coming into this game. That was biggest play that we were afraid of was them spreading us out and him attacking us with his feet.

"So he got up on us and then everything else, we kind of bottled up or contained for the most part," Wilson added. "But that play with the quarterback draw, we practice all week and we just couldn't execute on that one run."

Milton had just two drives on Friday go for more than 40 yards, both coming in the third quarter when a nine-play drive accounted for 61 yards and a eight-play drive went for 47 yards. But both possessions ended with a failed fourth-down conversion as Milton ended the night 4 for 13 on third-down conversions and 0 for 3 on fourth. Milton also had just one red zone possession, but didn't capitalize on it.

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