Playoffs in doubt for Bald Eagle Area football as the Eagles fall to Bellwood-Antis

A year ago, Bald Eagle Area was 8-1 and had the No. 1 seed locked up for the District 6 Class 2A playoffs at that point in the season.

But on Friday night, the Eagles entered their game against Bellwood-Antis at 4-4, and sitting just outside of the playoffs at No. 9 — knowing the top eight teams make postseason.

BEA needed a win to have a chance of defending its district title. However, the Blue Devils had other plans as they picked up a 32-18 win to get revenge from last season’s 42-0 loss to the Eagles and ruin Senior Night.

“We got a bunch of young kids. You lose eight college athletes, that’s hard to replace,” BEA coach Jesse Nagle said. “We lost three two-way starters for the year that are on crutches. We’re asking sophomores to step up against good football teams. We knew coming in it was going to be tough.”

The game started off like a heavyweight fight with the teams trading possessions back and forth with no one able to find a scoring drive.

Bellwood-Antis broke through with 4:37 left in the first half.

The Blue Devils put together a seven-play drive that saw quarterback Holden Schreier connect with Colin Gibbons, who was a thorn in the Eagles’ side all night, on a 17-yard pass for the first points of the game. Schreier and Gibbons hooked up on the two-point conversion to give their team an 8-0 lead.

BEA responded with a scoring drive of its own as it went 70 yards in 1:07.

Quarterback Carson Nagle connected with tight end Wyatt Spackman on a five-yard score. The highlight of the drive was Nagle finding a wide open Carnell Noone in the middle of the field that got the ball down to Bellwood-Antis’ 9.

It was 8-6 at the half in favor of the Blue Devils.

“It’s a game of inches. We missed a couple opportunities early. When you have the home field, you got to make the plays, and we missed, literally, by inches,” Jesse Nagle said. “We knew that they were going to come out and try to smack us in the mouth. I thought our kids held up pretty well until they hit a couple big plays, and we had a couple missed tackles.”

Bellwood-Antis opened the second half by driving right down the field on four straight rushes to open up a 10-point lead. Cayden Pellegrine had a 41-yard run for the score on the drive.

After the Blue Devils’ defense stopped the Eagles at their 10, the offense went 90 yards on 12 consecutive runs in the opposite direction to go up 24-6 with 9:04 left in the game.

Gibbons capped off the drive with a three-yard run, but also had a 17-yard run to open the drive, a 12-yard run to get onto BEA’s side of the field and a 24-yard carry to get to the 25. He finished the night as the game’s leading rusher with 94 yards on 16 carries.

Gibbons also had all of Bellwood Antis’ receiving yards at 59 and two receiving scores.

The Eagles cut the deficit in half 30 seconds later as Carson Nagle had two passes that went 66 yards.

He first hit Noone for 29 yards. The scoring pass was to Beau Taylor for 52 yards that saw Nagle scrambling in the backfield and then fired it deep to Taylor.

Nagle had a rushing score too, which was the final points of the night in what will be his final home game.

“(Bellwood-Antis is) definitely a good football team. The philosophy as coaches was, let’s score quick, let’s get them out of the run game, make them get in the pass game. We felt comfortable when they got to the pass game that we would have some success,” Jesse Nagle said. “But we never got there. We learned from tonight. I told the kids I was proud of them. It’s a storybook, it doesn’t always end the way you want it to end. At the end of the day, we have one more week with these guys, and we’re going to cherish it.”

Centre County’s Friday Scores

Bellefonte 49, Huntingdon 24

Bishop Guilfoyle Catholic 49, Philipsburg-Osceola 14

State College 60, Carlisle 0

Tyrone 82, Penns Valley 26

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