Phoenixville earns first win, drops Pottstown 41-6

POTTSTOWN >> It’s a certainty Phoenixville has a lot to enjoy this weekend.

And an even bigger certainty it will do so before getting back to work Monday.

The Phantoms rewarded themselves for their continued pursuit of improvement Friday by breaking into the win column. They did it in a big way, too, rolling up a 41-6 victory on Pottstown in a Grigg Memorial Field duel between two of three teams in the Pioneer Athletic Conference’s Frontier Division who came into the night oh-for in the division.

Phoenixville (1-2 league, 1-6 overall) is looking at a very formidable challenge next weekend when it hosts overpowering Pottsgrove. So getting the win against Pottstown (0-3, 1-6) will give it some pleasure before reality checks in.

“Without a doubt, they’re the best team around,” Phantom head coach Evan Breisblatt said afterward of the Falcons. “So we’re going to enjoy this win. We kept working hard.”

Phoenixville scored in a variety of ways to put a damper on Pottstown’s Senior/Parent Recognition Night festivities. It got three touchdowns from a ground game that racked up more than 200 yards, one from a passing game that contributed another 118 to the Phantoms’ total, and one from recovery of a blocked punt in the Pottstown end zone.

There was also Nick Sinapius’ 31-yard field goal near the midway point of the third quarter, which staked the visitors to a 35-point lead necessary to get the “running clock” for the rest of the game. Now, the Phantoms look to “slay the beast” — the term Breisblatt used in the post-game huddle to set his players’ minds for the next task at hand.

“Thursdays, we scout the other team once we have our game plan in place,” he said. “We know what we want to do; stopping the other team is another issue.”

Pottstown, in the wake of a lopsided loss to the Falcons last weekend, took a six-point lead in the game’s first 2-1/2 minutes when quarterback Josiah Wiggins, under center with starter Owen Morton out injured, made an electrifying 27-yard run up the middle eight plays into the contest. The lead held for more than six minutes before Phoenixville started its unanswered-points run with quarterback Connor Patania bulling his way into the end zone on a one-yard plow through the center.

“We came out with what we thought was the answer, the first quarter touchdown,” Pottstown head coach Mike Fischer said. “But they (Phantoms) did what they needed to do. Hats off to them.”

Phoenixville went ahead for keeps inside the one-minute mark of the first quarter, after pinning Pottstown down in the shadow of its own end zone. When Francisco Cuascut tried punting the ball away for the Trojans on fourth down, Jack Pizor blocked the boot and recovered the ball for a touchdown and 16-6 Phantom lead.

Alex Washington added to Phoenixville’s lead by running 10 yards up the middle with 8:25 left before the half, then threw a conversion pass to Zion Small. Washington followed with a one-yard scoring run little more than seven minutes later, and Small ran the Phantoms’ lead to 38-6 inside the half’s final minute when he hooked up with Patania (6-for-14, 118 yards) on a 72-yard scoring pass.

“He’s a great athlete,” Breisblatt said of Small, who distinguished himself on the defensive side by making a pair of interceptions — both setting up the Phantoms’ last two scoring drives of the first half. “We usually have him guarding the other team’s best guy, and he usually comes out on top.”

Phoenixville took the second-half kickoff and marched it 11 plays to the Pottstown 14 before being stopped on a third-down pass miss. Sinapius then booted the 31-yarder, and Phoenixville got one more deep drive into Trojan territory before a recovered fumble gave Pottstown one last drive that consumed the last seven minutes but yielded no additional points.

“Our defense has been playing well the last two games,” Breisblatt said. “We’re much improved the last two weeks.”

Offensively, Travis Pannella netted a game-high 158 yards on 20 carries for Phoenixville, much of it off second-effort plows through the middle. Washington emerged as the visitors’ lone multi-catch performer with three receptions for 34 yards.

“We saw the counter was working well, so we went to it,” Breisblatt said. “We try to even the carries between them (Pannella and Washington), but if something’s working, we’ll go to it.”

Wiggins was the offensive star for Pottstown, his 45 rushing yards off 11 carries complemented by Aubrey Baker’s 11-for-34 running. Wiggins also had four pass completions for 92 yards, connecting with Nelson Figueroa twice to cover 77 stripes.

On the defensive side, Pottstown’s Jon Oister recovered fumbles in each half.

“We’re going to come back, get back to business and get our energy back up,” Fischer said in advance of next week’s home-field contest against winless (0-3, 0-7) Upper Merion. “We’re going to push and motivate the kids.”

NOTES >> Pottstown recognized the senior football players, cheerleaders and marching-band members — along with their parents — prior to the game. … Phoenixville’s driving ball-control play was marked by it needing to make only one punt the entire night, compared to Pottstown going into punting formation four times.