The Bellwood-Antis junior high football team hosted undefeated Chestnut Ridge on Thursday evening at Bellwood Memorial Stadium.
Bellwood-Antis played the Lion junior high to a 14-14 tie, the only blemish on the Chestnut Ridge’s record in the last two years. Chestnut Ridge was 7-0 in 2001 and is now 4-0-1 this season.
The Little Blue Devils are now 5-1-1 with a game at Tyrone next week on Oct. 17 and a season-ending road game at home with Moshannon Valley on Oct. 24.
The B-A junior high, after going 4-5 last year, including three straight losses at the end of the year, has recovered in 2002 to post an outstanding record.
Ridge’s quarterback Josh Utz tossed a 70-yard to Devin Sherwood and rushed one yard for another to account for both of Chestnut Ridge’s scores, plus passing to Claycomb for the 2pt. PAT after the first score. Both Lion scores came in the first quarter.
Josh Kleinfelter tallied the first score for the Blue Devils on a seven yard run, then added the two-point conversion run to tie the score at 8-8.
In the second quarter, Boe Latchford went in from a yard away for the tying score for the B-A junior high.
That was to be the final score of the ballgame. Both teams defenses took over from there keeping each other’s offenses out of the endzone. In junior high and junior varsity, there is no overtime according to PIAA regulations.
“Chestnut Ridge was pretty confident,” said B-A coach Charlie Burch. “I thik we stunned them.” They are a good football team. I’m not unhappy about the tie, they were undefeated for the last two years, but I wasn’t completely satisfied either since we didn’t get a win. They mad some big plays and we were able to respond. We played great defense, especially in the second half. Chestnut Ridge has their chances, but we stopped them. Chestnut Ridge couldn’t stop our offense in the first half, we scored both times we had the ball. We outrushed them by a large margin. We were most physical, while they were more finesse in their attack. We tried to balance our offense with smashes up the middle and then quick tosses to the outside.”
