Knight, Nashua South football open season with win over Spaulding

ROCHESTER – The Spaulding High School football team had an answer for just about everything Nashua South did in Friday’s season opener.

An answer for everything, except Trevor Knight.

The South quarterback threw for two touchdowns, ran for another and intercepted two passes on defense to help lead the Panthers to a 34-24 win over the Red Raiders in the Division I opener for both teams.

Knight did all of that damage in the first half, and not by choice. On 13-yard run late in the third quarter, Knight lowered his shoulder at the end of the play and barreled over a Spaulding defender. He came up in pain, his right thumb apparently dislocated.

“We’ll see where that goes,” South coach Scott Knight said. “The good thing was that it kind of popped back in on its own. We don’t think (it’s broken). It doesn’t appear that way. It could be a few days, it could be a few weeks.”

Knight finished 5 of 14 for 132 yards through the air and carried 10 times for 82 yards before the injury. Andrew DeCarteret added 60 yards and two touchdowns on the ground, while Robbie Smyth caught three passes for 117 yards, including a 64-yard touchdown pass from Knight.

“They’re a good team,” Spaulding coach Jeff Hunt said. “They’re very well coach and that quarterback is the real deal. We hit hard, we fought until the end, we just gave up some big plays. That’s a moral victory. We showed we can play with anybody.”

It didn’t look that way early, as the Panthers (1-0) scored on their first drive, and added another touchdown after Knight’s first interception to go up 14-0 midway through the first quarter.

But Spaulding’s defense tightened after that, forcing South to go three-and-out on three straight possessions. In between, the Raiders put together a six-play, 75-yard drive, highlighted by a 51-yard run by Trey Scott (103 yards rushing) and ended on a 7-yard touchdown run by Tyler Snow.

Mitch Cyr added a 26-yard field goal with 7:19 to play in the first half to cut South’s lead to 14-10.

South came back at the end of the quarter, scoring two touchdowns in a span of 2:21 to go up 17 points, but after the second score – an 8-yard TD pass from Knight to Josh Perry – Snow returned the kickoff 93 yards to make it a 10-point game.

It was still 27-17 in the third quarter when Spaulding put together an 18-play drive that eat up 9:12 seconds of the clock. The Panthers helped keep the drive going with three encroachment penalties, but the Raiders got nothing out of it, as Cyr was wide left on a 35-yard field goal attempt.

“We were up 14-0 and we had a couple of bumps in the road,” Scott Knight said. “Penalties and field position really hurt us. We’ve got to clean up some of that stuff. We had some stuff we liked and we talked about it at halftime. We had to wait until almost the fourth quarter to do it.”

South got the ball back on its own 20 with 2:40 left in the third quarter, but needed just seven plays and 2:06 to cover 80 yards and score on DeCarteret’s second rushing touchdown. Knight was hurt on the drive and didn’t return to the game, but by then, the margin was too big for Spaulding to overcome.

Scott added a 12-yard rushing touchdown with 2:22 left in the game, but South recovered the onside kick.

“It feels good to see that, the kids that just aren’t going to quit, no matter what,” Hunt said. “If things don’t go our way, we’re going to keep fighting.”