Football Drops Home Finale
Beaver Falls, PA—The Geneva College football team welcomed undefeated Washington & Jefferson (W&J) to Reeves Field for Senior Day on Saturday afternoon as Geneva honored its 17 seniors. The Golden Tornadoes played well at times, but turnovers once again proved costly as Geneva came up short, 31-17. Geneva drops to 3-6 overall, 2-5 in the Presidents' Athletic Conference (PAC), while W&J improved to 9-0 overall, 7-0 in the PAC.
The game started well for Geneva when, on its second possession,
Bryan Stafford took the first play of the drive and ran up the left sideline for 60 yards, setting the Golden Tornadoes up inside the W&J 20 yard line. After getting to the 3 yard line, a sack on 3
rd down forced Geneva to settle for a 32 yard
Andrew Dowler field goal for a 3-0 lead.
W&J responded on its next drive with a field goal of its own to tie the score at 3-3 heading into the 2
nd quarter. After a long W&J touchdown drive early in the quarter, Geneva proceeded to fumble on back to back possessions, one of which gave W&J a short field and allowed it to extend the lead with another touchdown, 17-3.
Geneva regained some momentum right before halftime when the offense went 70 yards in just 42 seconds, capped off by a 17 yard touchdown pass from Stafford to
Nick Monteleone with 10 seconds to go before the break. The score enabled Geneva to get back within 17-10 heading into the locker room.
The Golden Tornadoes continued that momentum right out of the halftime break when, on the first play from scrimmage,
Torrin Sallis intercepted a W&J pass and returned it deep into the W&J territory. Unfortunately on the next play Geneva fumbled it back over to W&J.
From there the 3
rd quarter proved to be a defensive struggle, with neither team able to score. However, W&J scored early in the 4
th quarter, and then once more with under two minutes to go, to extend the lead out to 31-10. A late Stafford to Monteleone 42 yard pass with less than a minute to go finished off the scoring, 31-17.
Stafford led the way offensively again with 121 yards rushing on 22 carries. He also threw for 109 yards passing, including the two touchdown passes to Monteleone, who had four receptions for 72 yards. Defensively
Joe Shively led the way with 15 tackles. He was helped out by
Austin Jacobson, who had 11 tackles, and
Jared Hogue and
Torrin Sallis who each had 10 tackles.
Geneva finishes out its 2017 season on the road next Saturday, November 11, at Westminster College for a 1:00 p.m. kickoff. Westminster enters that contest with a 6-3 record overall, including 5-2 in the PAC.
