‘Things were going crazy.’ Pennington brothers help lead Sayre to win over Frankfort.
Sayre two-way standout Cole Pennington felt his calf cramping as he lunged for a defensive interception late in the third quarter.
“I was actually a little late to it, but luckily I recovered,” said Pennington, who has committed as a quarterback to play college ball at Marshall, but as a small-school prep player, he lines up in the defensive secondary, too. “Mid-run, I felt I was going to cramp because my calves were really tight. I caught it and as soon as I hit the ground, it just locked up.”
The diving play in his own end zone saved a potential go-ahead Frankfort touchdown, but the cramp also knocked Pennington out of the game as QB during a crucial stretch. Sayre held a slim 18-16 lead with 2:16 left in the third quarter.
No worries, though, for Sayre. Class A’s No. 9 team had another Pennington on deck. Freshman Luke Pennington took the reins and helped the team widen the margin with a 25-yard touchdown pass to Dant Bowling on a fourth-down-and-13 play.
Sayre won the game 32-24 with the younger Pennington named MVP of the bowl event.
“He did great,” Cole Pennington said of his younger brother. “He took the team and he just led them. I couldn’t be more proud of him.”
The fourth-down play capped an 80-yard drive that saw a range of penalties, more player cramps and clutch performances.
“(Luke) just did a great job of maintaining his poise,” said Luke’s dad, and coach, Chad Pennington. “Things were going crazy. We’re getting delay-of-games, we had to shuffle people in and out — people who hadn’t played those positions before — but he just kept his poise, and he’s done that just by watching Cole play. That’s just kind of his nature.”
Converting a fourth-down touchdown with the game potentially on the line is impressive, but maybe more so considering that Bowling was the very last receiver in that play call’s progression, according to Chad Pennington.
“I think I rolled out and I missed the first read and then it became a scramble,” said Luke Pennington, who also plays defense and had his own interception in the first half. “I started scanning the field and I saw Dant Bowling in the back of the end zone, so I threw it to him and he made a great catch.”
The win did not come easy for the Spartans (3-0). Frankfort (2-1) took an 8-0 lead in the first quarter on a 14-yard fumble scoop and score by the Panthers’ Elijah Goins and a two-point conversion pass from Sam Davis to John Thomas Gilbert.
Cole Pennington and the Spartans offense sputtered through much of the first half with missed connections and dropped passes. Frankfort’s Mason Leigh intercepted a Cole Pennington pass as Sayre was driving for a potential tie early in the second quarter.
A Brady Atkins 33-yard field goal got the Spartans on the board midway through the second quarter. Then Cole Pennington got things on track.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘Hey, you gotta lock in,’” Cole Pennington said.
Back-to-back touchdown drives staked Sayre to an 18-8 halftime lead on a TD pass from Cole Pennington to Bowling and a scoring run by Caleb Kern.
But Frankfort responded in the third quarter after a Sayre fumble. Thiago Pires took a Sam Davis swing pass 54 yards for a score and Jayden Morgan completed the two-point conversion to cut the lead to 18-16 with 5:36 left in the third.
On the ensuing kickoff, Frankfort scrambled to the ball first and recovered it on the Spartans’ 20, setting up a potential huge swing of momentum. While not a turnover, the kickoff play came in a game where Sayre had two lost fumbles and an interception. Two of the turnovers came inside their opponent’s 20-yard line.
“That’s just youth,” Coach Pennington explained about the mistakes. “Learning how to stay focused and not push the panic button. But we fought through it.”
With the great field position, Frankfort soon had a first-and-goal at the 8-yard line trying to take the lead. A holding penalty set the Panthers back to the 17 and Cole Pennington took it from there with his interception in the end zone.
A scoop-and-score fumble recovery by Sayre on Frankfort’s next possession pushed the Spartans’ lead to 32-16 with 7:34 left in the fourth quarter. Davis hit Elijah Walker on a 4-yard TD pass with 4:08 left in the game to cut the score to the final margin.
Luke Pennington’s MVP performance bodes well for the Spartans after his older brother graduates and for this season, as well.
“We’ve proved that we’ve got a backup quarterback and if something happens to Cole, we can go and execute,” Coach Pennington said. “In Class A ball, it’s ‘all hands on deck.’ We don’t have 70 guys, so everybody’s got to be taking mental reps and physical reps in practice because you never know when your number is going to be called.”
Highlights
This story was originally published September 4, 2021 at 8:20 AM.
