No shame in defeat for Easton after strong effort

FROM THE MORNING CALL

Heads were bowed and a few tears trickled down faces and fell to the Andy Leh Stadium turf late Saturday night as Easton football coaches draped silver medals around the necks of the Red Rovers players.

Yes, Easton came up short this time.

A rugged, hard-fought 28-21 loss to Nazareth denied the Red Rovers from getting the District 11 title three-peat they so desperately wanted.

For the first time ever, the Class 4A gold went to the Blue Eagles and their high-powered offense.


But there certainly was no shame in losing and no excuses among the tears that Easton players wiped from their faces.

Once again, the Red Rovers met head-on the challenge of playing two games in three days and three games over nine days.

It has become a badge of honor for this proud program, owners of the second most wins in Pennsylvania football history, to do what no one else would think about doing — playing an emotional, Thanksgiving Day rivalry game and coming back two days later to play for a district championship.

And they have proven they can do it before, knocking off Parkland on little more than 48 hours' rest two years ago and proving it wasn't a fluke by stunning Whitehall in the same situation last year.

It looked like the Red Rovers might stun the Lehigh Valley again by jumping out to a 14-0 lead just 61/2 minutes into it on Saturday night.

The Easton bleachers, bench, band, cheerleaders, even the two mascots — the costumed one and the real-live dog — were whooping it up.

It seemed as though the emotion and passion generated all week within the community, so visibly on display on College Hill on Thursday morning, had carried over and into Saturday night.

However, after those two early scores, Easton's next five possessions were all three-and-outs. The adrenaline rush and big plays vanished.

You can't shut down Nazareth's potent offensive attack, so the only way to beat them is to keep scoring touchdowns.

Easton simply couldn't sustain its early-game momentum.

The Blue Eagles seized the tempo and, eventually, the lead on three Dan Harding touchdown passes. The last one may have wounded the Red Rovers the most as it came on fourth down and with just 4.3 seconds left in the first half.

"We just couldn't get a stop," said Easton coach Steve Shiffert, who was trying to win his sixth district title as head coach and the program's eighth overall. "They're a very good football team. They stretch you all over the place and their kids make plays."

Nazareth took the second-half kickoff and use a methodical, surgical-like, 12-play, 56-yard drive to make it 28-14 and Easton's once electric side of the field was rendered silent.

And yet no one among the Easton partisans was heading to the exits. They knew their kids wouldn't quit.

"You know Nazareth is going to make plays, but you have to roll with that and keep your composure and fight back and our kids did that," Shiffert said. "We didn't put our heads down. They could have gotten blown out, but they wouldn't let that happen."

Instead, a Jared Powell interception staved off another Nazareth threat and fueled a character-revealing, 16-play, 85-yard drive that cut the Blue Eagles' lead to seven with 4:57 left.

Then twice Easton forced Nazareth into third-down situations, but twice the Blue Eagles got conversions to play keep-away and put perhaps the biggest win in school history away.

Harding, one of the best in a big year for area quarterbacks, stayed calm and cool when Easton brought the heat. He wears No. 12 and you'd swear there are times he shows flashes of being a very young Tom Brady.

"We knew they were going to come out firing, Easton always does," Harding said after a 259-yard passing night. "Easton's always going to come out hard. They prepare well for this game because they've had the same situation before and won. We were prepared for it. We just had to settle down and get things going ourselves."

While Nazareth players, coaches and fans lingered on the field in celebration, Shiffert extended his congratulations to his alma mater. He said he still lives three blocks away from the stadium and under other circumstances he might have been proud of what Nazareth had accomplished — the school's first district title since back-to-back Class 3A crowns in 1988 and 1989.

But Shiffert, who deserves more credit than he gets for keeping the Easton football program strong year after year, felt much more pride for his own kids.

This, remember, was supposed to a rebuilding year for the Rovers, and yet here they were, in the district finals again

"We showed a lot of gumption again," he said. "But at the same time, we play these three games in this short period of time expecting to win them all. We had some opportunities. We had some drops. We told the kids we're proud of the effort, but we're not going to accept defeat. We're just going to have to work a little harder."

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