Sep 27, 2014 4 min read

ELLSWORTH – If Liam Ryan could bottle his halftime speech and sell it on the open market, it might bring millions.

A disillusioned and disappointed Jefferson-Morgan High School football team was sitting in the locker room after the first 24 minutes of Friday night’s game against Bentworth trailing 14-0 after producing 30 total yards. And the Rockets head coach needed to pull them out of their funk.

“I told them we needed to focus,” Ryan said simply. “We had 24 minutes left.”

In an amazing second-half performance, the Rockets scored all their points in a 49-29 victory over the Bearcats in a Tri-County South Conference game.

The win puts the Rockets (3-2, 3-2) in a strong position for one of the four playoff berths from the conference, especially if they can play a full game the way they played the second half of last night’s game.

Jefferson-Morgan scored 28 points in the third quarter and 21 in the fourth to stun the Bearcats (2-3, 2-3).

Sophomore Joe Headlee scored three touchdowns, the second one on a pass from Austin Clark, and rushed for 161 yards on 10 carries. But the biggest play of the game might have been when Ian Wolfe scooped up a fumble and returned it 30 yards to tie the game 14-14. It gave the Rockets two touchdowns in a 30-second span.

Wolfe’s return would not be the only defensive score of the game as Brennan Kozich sacked Bentworth’s Josh Hughes, then picked up the fumble and rambled 20 yards for a touchdown that gave the Rockets a 42-17 lead with 6:22 to play.

“We came out and had a couple nice runs by (Headlee),” Ryan said. “When Ian scored that touchdown, to make a play like that really took the wind out of Bentworth. I think that was the turning point.”

Another big play came midway through the third quarter, when the Rockets snuck tight end Jakob Bissett unguarded down the field and Clark hit him with a 15-yard pass. Bissett took it the rest of the way for a 58-yard touchdown.

“They came out in the Power-I and got us with some of those runs,” said Bentworth coach Ron Skiles. “I was a little concerned about them doing that. They got a couple nice runs for touchdowns and they hit the tight end for that touchdown. Those were big plays.”

Bentworth opened the game by taking a 14-0 lead and bottling up the J-M offense. Felix Hernandez made it 7-0 when hescored from six yards out. Hernandez set the touchdown up with a 38-yard run to the six-yard line. Phillip Stahlman made it 14-0 with 8:19 left in the half when he caught a 9-yard pass from quarterback Alex Rios-Lopez.

Lopez completed 18 of 36 passes for 169 yards before being replaced by Hughes, who completed 4 of 7 passes, was intercepted once, and gave up a fumble on a sack. Rios-Lopez came in later in the game had runs of 9 and 4 yards for touchdowns.

Bentworth held the lead only once in the second half, when Levi Jordan hit a 30-yard field goal with 5;59 left in the third quarter.

But Jefferson-Morgan scored the next five touchdowns.

“We had to do our best to win this game (because it was a conference game),” said Ryan.

Besides his big day on offense, Headlee intercepted Rios-Lopez in the end zone to stop a potential 21-0 deficit at halftime.

“He started the season as our quarterback,” Ryan said. “We like the way he runs the ball. Getting him at running back … has really helped our three-back system.”

Trevor Kniha, who rushed for 42 yards on 9 carries, scored J-M’s last TD on a four-yard run.

“The turnovers were a big swing,” Skiles said. “When we have the ball, and they end up scoring, that’s not a stellar day for us. But we’ll keep working.”