Elco runs into buzzsaw against West York in season opener

Elco football coach Robert Miller wasn’t surprised his team came out battling in the second half Saturday afternoon.

Some teams might have packed it in after falling into a 21-point hole.

“They don’t let the scoreboard dictate their success or how the game is going,” Miller said. “That’s not who they are. They’re a group that will judge themselves based on the next play. We’re never defined by any numbers up there.”

At the end of the game, the points weren’t in the Raiders’ favor. West York defeated Elco, 33-6, to win its first opener since 2020.

The Raiders had trouble right off the bat. They had several chances to stop the Bulldogs first drive, but untimely penalties kept the drive alive.

Freshman Jaxon Ferber, who shared the quarterback duties with senior Issac Roberts, hit Conrad Beatty in the end zone for the game’s first touchdown. A 2-point conversion later, and West York had a lead it never lost.

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Elco quarterback Steven Rosado, one of 27 seniors on the squad, couldn’t get the offense moving, and they were forced to punt on their first drive.

That punt was blocked, and West York’s Ibraheem Fuentes-Bream picked up the ball and carried it into the end zone for another Bulldogs’ touchdown.

Penalties and stalled offenses were the theme of the rest of the first half until the Bulldogs’ Roberts cut through a hole in the line and scampered 79 yards for a touchdown in the final minute to take a 21-0 lead into the break.

The Raiders’ offense didn’t put anything together until the fourth quarter when Dalton Pyszka hauled in a 6-yard pass from Rosado, who finished with 65 yards passing. Mitchell Frederick led the ground game with 70 yards on nine carries.

But Miller still saw positives in his team’s performance.

“I’m very pleased,” he said. “We just need to clean up some of the penalties that kind of killed our drives and execute a little bit better with the ball. We got a little loose with the ball, had a couple hit the ground, but I was really pleased with how it went.”

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Elco runs into buzzsaw against West York in season opener