Daniel Boone falls to Conrad Weiser in Berks opener

ROBESONIA >> Daniel Boone’s gridiron progress hit a detour Friday night in the Blazers’ Berks League Section 1 opener, courtesy of the host Conrad Weiser Scouts.

A competitive first half that ended with the pair of 2-1 clubs deadlocked quickly fell apart for head coach Rob Flowers’ squad after the break. The result was a 42-14 loss.

Conrad Weiser seized control of the trenches on both sides of the ball following an opening 24 minutes that were played to a 14-all standoff. The Scouts executed a power running game with the Power I — an attack that the Blazers simply could not contain — and found pay dirt four times in the second half to blow out what had been a spirited contest.

On the other side of the ball, Boone didn’t sniff the end zone after the break, partly due to a one-dimensional attack. The Blazers completed one pass all evening, for three yards. They attempted five.

“They came faster than us and they put it physically to us,” Flowers said of play during the second half. “Their kids were springing off the sidelines, into the huddle, up to line of scrimmage and they got us.

“We started off slow. They were the team during the second half today. That’s a good football team.”

The contest started brightly for the Blazers, when Quinn Foley took the opening kickoff back 93 yards for a touchdown. Foley had only the Weiser kicker, Matt Noll, to beat by the time he reached the 50 and he did. A scant 14 seconds in, Boone had a 7-0 lead.

Dalton Moyer was a one-man wrecking crew in response for the Scouts. He blocked a punt attempt two possessions later to give Weiser the ball at the Blazers’ 7-yard-line, then went off left tackle twice with the succeeding two snaps to pull the hosts even at 7.

Foley, easily Boone’s best player Friday night, went for 57 and a score untouched off left end early in the second quarter to give the Blazers a 14-7 edge with 10:40 until halftime. He would finish with 69 yards on six totes, in addition to that 93-yard return.

The advantage was short-lived, however: Weiser senior quarterback Alex MacKenzie engineered a seven-play, 55-yard answer that culminated in a 20-yard keeper for touchdown that knotted up the proceedings. The big play was a Mackenzie-to-Aiden Kreitz completion on the prior snap, good for 20 yards on a third-and-5, that set the Scouts up in business at the Blazers’ 20.

Noll missed a 47-yard field goal try that would have sent the hosts into the locker room with the lead at the break, but the miss hardly mattered. Weiser was a different football team after it.

Nothing encapsulated this better than the half’s second snap: Kreitz rumbled down the right hashmarks to within five yards of the end zone on a carry off right tackle. He refused to go down in the arms of a pair of Boone defenders at the 5; the pile caught up to play from behind and a sea of blue jerseys helped push him into the end zone to cover those final yards and give Weiser its first lead at 21-14, 48 seconds into the third quarter.

The tone had been set and it would only expand in volume down the stretch. Three additional scores, all coming on long, meat-grinding drives, widened the final margin.

“You could say good first half/bad second half, but we were flat all night,” Flowers said. “But I’m just gonna say that we got thumped in the second half. Those second 24 (minutes), we got beat bad, on both sides of the ball.

“And we’re gonna respond to it, trust me. That’s not going to happen again.”