Never before in Jordan-Elbridge’s football annals could it point to a game where it allowed 34 points in a quarter and still won.
Yet that’s what the Eagles pulled off Saturday at Hannibal, clinching a Section III Class C playoff spot by overcoming the Warriors’ second-quarter outburst with a sustained point surge of its own to prevail 62-48.
Going into the week, J-E was tied with Thousand Islands for third place in the C North division, each with 2-2 league records behind Lowville and General Brow, while Hannibal was 2-3 in league play.
One of those three sides would miss out on the playoffs, and J-E’s odds improved when Thousand Island got stomped by General Brown 76-12 on Friday.
Now all the Eagles needed was to beat Hannibal, and it started fine, Jeremiah Sparks going 72 yards for a touchdown in the first quarter as Marion Quigley also scored.
Despite its 15-8 lead, though, J-E would get run over as Hannibal squeezed five touchdowns into the 12 minutes of the second period, with Zach Williams scoring on runs of 67 and 31 yards.
As if that wasn’t enough, Williams also threw a six-yard TD pass to Zach Shortslef, who scored again on a 15-yard run just before halftime.
Yet J-E didn’t let the game get out of reach. After Hannibal’s first TD of the period (a short run by Hunter Gorman), Sparks returned the ensuing kickoff to the end zone, and returned later in the period to break free for a 55-yard scoring dash.
So at halftime, Hannibal was up 42-28, but soon enough it was a victim of the very pounding it gave to the Eagles as J-E burned the Warriors for 28 unanswered points in a decisive third quarter.
The barrage included a safety by J-E’s defense, a short scoring run by Nate Pinckney and, most of all, Sparks, who tacked on three more touchdowns on runs of one, 50 and 30 yards.
All told, Sparks amassed 271 yards on 17 carries, and the Eagles moved to 4-2 overall, guaranteed of a winning record for the regular season, which concludes this Friday at home against 0-6 Port Byron/Union Springs.
