HobbsDailyReport.com
LINCOLNTON – Playing from behind, as least the last two weeks, hasn’t seemed to alarm Fred T. Foard High’s varsity football team.
On Thursday night — six days after wiping out a lead by Bandys and winning on the road — the Tigers rallied from an early 17-point deficit to beat host North Lincoln 40-26.
FRED T. FOARD 40
NORTH LINCOLN 26
The Knights (1-1) started their scoring with a safety and they were up 17-0 before Foard even scored.
But 21 unanswered points by the Tigers wiped out a 19-9 lead by the Knights as the Tigers improved to 2-1 and won on the road for the second time since second-year head coach Derrick Minor took over the program.
“We challenged them (his players) at halftime not to put their helmets on if they didn’t believe they could come back and win,” Minor told The Newton Observer News Enterprise in a postgame interview.
Tate Beaver, Corey Siemer and Aram Lomax each had two rushing TDs for Foard, which ran for 368 yards on 53 carries, threw for another 171 yards and had 539 yards of total offense.
Siemer ran 18 times for 179 yards, Beaver had 15 carries for 101 yards and quarterback Jack Colosimo completed six of nine passes for 171 yards.
North Lincoln scored 17 points in the opening quarter. After a safety, the Knights got a 67-yard kick return TD from DaeKown Camp to lead 9-0. They were up 17-0 after Caleb Holley caught a 3-yard TD pass from Reed McRorie.
Foard opened its scoring with a 25-yard field goal by Daniel Lackey with seven minutes, 37 seconds left in the first half.
Down 19-9 at one point, Foard pulled within 19-17 on a 1-yard TD run by Lomas and two-point conversion run by Beaver.
The Tigers went ahead for good on Colosimo’s 2-yard TD run with 1:51 left in the third quarter, and Beaver added a 3-yard TD run for a 25-19 lead.
Siemer broke the game with the next two Tigers scores, on runs of 47 and 3 yards. Both came in the third quarter.
Foard, 3-8 last season in Minor’s first year there, can match that win mark next Friday at home against West Lincoln. The Tigers meet St. Stephens on the road the next week and play their Northwestern 3A-4A opener on Sept. 22 at Patton.
North Lincoln, playing in class 2A after battling in the North Piedmont 3A-4A last season, continues its first season under head coach Steven Pack (former Foard assistant), when it travels to Alexander Central next Friday.
The Knights’ Sept. 15 game is at Bessemer City, and their first South Fork 2A game is Sept. 22 at West Lincoln.