Johnson, Penn Wood cruise past Glen Mills

YEADON — Penn Wood’s team speed was on full display Friday night as the Patriots scored every way possible en route to a dominating 48-16 win over Del Val League rival Glen Mills on Senior Day at Kerr Field.

Penn Wood’s first score came on a 37-yard pass play from quarterback Desman Johnson, Jr. to Kennedy Poles. The Patriots struck again on a 47-yard scoop-and-score by defensive back Omar Ba.

The Patriots also capitalized on 22-yard touchdown jet sweep/pass to Poles. Then Johnson hooked up with Michael Dargan Jr. on a 70-yard catch-and-run play.

Not done yet, Johnson struck again with a 64-yard strike to Edmund Dennis.

Ba scored once again, this time on a 55-yard interception return for a touchdown to give the Patriots (7-1, 3-0) a 42-8 lead going into intermission.

Penn Wood head coach Ato Troop said his offense is designed to take advantage of his team’s strengths.

“Obviously we’re a spread offense, so we want to attack vertical as well as horizontal, so we can take advantage of our speed,” Troop said. “Glen Mills is an athletic team, but as you can see we used our football speed, we played some man coverage and if teams want to play man, we’ve got something for them.”

Troop’s defense and special teams were also hungry to score.

After stopping the Battling Bulls on their first possession of the second half, Poles took the Glen Mills (3-5, 1-2) punt and returned it 70 yards to the end zone, capping the Patriots’ scoring for the night.

“We want to score,” Troop said. “On defense, we want to get the ball back for our offense. We also want to score any way we can and we did that tonight.”

Johnson finished at 7 of 14 for 205 yards and three touchdown passes. The 6-foot-2, 240-pound junior also rushed four times for 18 yards.

Troop talked about his young signal caller.

“Dez is a guy who is like a coach on the field,” Troop said. “He has a great grasp of the offense. We didn’t do a lot of things we wanted to today because we got so many big plays. We scored, I think, three non-offensive touchdowns. But overall a good game. We’ve got some things we need to get better with, but when you win like this, in command, you can’t do everything. They made some plays like we thought they would, and I’m happy with the way my kids responded.”

Glen Mills scored on an 80-yard kick return by Blessin Sesay in the first quarter and on a 10-yard touchdown throw by Nasir Johnson to Brian Colbert late in the fourth.

Head coach Kevin Owens talked about the talented and fast Patriots team he had just faced.

“Oh yeah, they’re a very good football team,” Owens said. “They are what they are, they’re 7-1 and that tells you a lot about them. We’ve got to get better. We’re going to keep working hard, and we’ll see what happens next week.”

Owens said that despite the lopsided score, there were thing he took away from of the game.

“I saw some really good things happen today and I saw some really bad things,” Owens said. “As coaches, we’ve just got to coach them up.”