Nashua South's Connor Leary, right, strips the ball from Portsmouth's Bill Lane during Saturday's game at Stellos Stadium.
NASHUA – The Nashua High School South football team expected to come roaring out of the gate in Saturday’s season opener against Portsmouth.
That didn’t happen, but it didn’t stop South’s offense from turning in a strong performance.
After falling behind 7-0, the Panthers scored on their next three possessions. And although it took a little longer than they expected to get things in gear, South was still able to walk away with a 49-14 win over the Clippers in a non-division game at Stellos Stadium.
“I was kind of surprised,” South coach Scott Knight said. “I thought we’d get out of the gate a little better than we did. I’m not sure why. Sometimes that happens in the first game. We scrimmaged really well and we got out well in them. That’s why I thought we’d get out fast.”
Despite the slow start, South still piled up 506 yards of offense, led by quarterback Keith Farkas, who had 274 yards in the air and five touchdown passes, and running back Armond McRae, who added 196 yards of total offense and three scores.
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The Panthers got touchdowns from five different players, and Farkas completed passes to six different receivers, going 15 of 20 with one interception. Four of his scoring tosses were plays of more than 20 yards, where the receiver turned a short pass into a big gain.
“We have that (big-play capability) in every single one of our receivers,” Farkas said. “There is just so many different weapons we have, it’s weird because we came into the season figuring we had lost Haskell and we lost Frederickson. Our players are stepping it up and working hard.”
Portsmouth coach Bill Murphy wasn’t too surprised by the outcome, and knew going in that has team, which was the runner-up in Division III three of the last four seasons, could be in for a long afternoon.
Nashua South's Brandon Gauthier runs with the ball.
“We haven’t seen the speed that some of their people have,” he said. “That was problematic. We would try to get an angle to tackle them, and our angle was five yards behind where he was. Stuff like that, we knew that probably would happen.”
Despite that, the Clippers were the ones to get on the board first. On the first play of Portsmouth’s second possession, quarterback Quinn McCann ripped through the South defense for a 53-yard run. Three plays later, with McCann on the sidelines after a hard hit, Billy Hartmann found Aidan O’Leary in the end zone on a 33-yard touchdown pass with 3:13 left in the first quarter.
The Panthers didn’t need much time to respond. A big kick return by Derek Paradis gave South the ball at midfield, and McRae (17 yards on the drive) and Brandon Gauthier (25-yard run) set up Farkas’s 5-yard touchdown pass to Pat Bolton to tie the game before the end of the quarter.
After a three-and-out by Portsmouth, South took the lead for good when Farkas found Chris Thistle for a 21-yard score less than two minutes into the second quarter.
An interception by Nilsson Basora ended Portsmouth’s next drive and gave South the ball at its own 38. With the Panthers facing third-and-5, Paradis ran for 15 yards to pick up the first down, and on the next play, McRae took a short pass 42 yards for another touchdown and a 21-7 lead.
“We worked hard on our downfield blocking with our receivers,” Knight said. “They were pinching their tackles down and the linebackers were two yards off the ball. I don’t care who you play, you can’t run inside. You can run a lot of other things and that’s what we did. We were gonna take what they gave us and that’s what they did.”
South made it 28-7 on a 53-yard catch-and-run by Gauthier with less than a minute to go in the half, and the Panthers almost added more when Dan McMormack recovered a Portsmouth fumble on the kickoff. South got down to the Clippers’ 3-yard line when the half ended.
Portsmouth opened the second half by going 67 yards on five plays, getting in the end zone on a 23-yard pass from McCann to Anthony Kurylak to make it 28-14.
Portsmouth's Aidan O'Leary makes a catch in front of South's Connor Rogowsky.
But McRae answered on South’s next play, taking a handoff and going 62 yards for another touchdown to take momentum back.
“You can’t let down in any part of the game or they’ll come back and bite you,” Murphy said. “We’re making mistakes that cannot be made and they took advantage of it. If we’re playing somebody else, maybe they don’t pick up as quickly on it. It got away from us later in the game.”
McRae added a 29-yard touchdown reception in the third quarter and Jack Lobrutto had a 17-yard scoring run late in the fourth to finish out the scoring.
Both teams open division play next week, as South hosts Pinkerton on Friday at 7 p.m. at Stellos Stadium. Portsmouth will host Souhegan, also on Friday.