Turnovers plague East boys in first two games

The Portland East boys fell to Shafer Middle School by a final of 40-10 last week. The Panthers kept the game close in the first half, but the third quarter of the contest ultimately buried East, and they were not able to recover.

After the first quarter the Panthers were only down 6-4, and at half the score was 16-6. The Third quarter though would be brutal for the Panthers and they would enter the final quarter of play down 25-7. “Shafer completely shut our offense down, they forced into bad shots and bad passes,” Head Coach Scott Steinbrecher commented.

Portland could not get any offense going the entire night. “We either missed the shot or would turn the ball over, this game is on me I have to do a better job preparing these guys and I take the blame for this performance,” Steinbrecher stated.

“We will get back to practice and I will have my crew ready for the next game, sometimes you have these games where nothing seems to go right, but we will learn from this as a team,” Steinbrecher replied.

vs. white house

Portland East dropped its second game to the White House Blue Devils last Tuesday night, 35-19 and allowed the Blue Devils to complete the regular season sweep. White House was able to apply a suffocating defense that forced several turnovers and led to easy points for the Blue Devils.

Portland went in at the half down 23-5 and was never able to recover. The Panthers were playing shorthanded on the night with Duncan Smallwood out The Panthers put forth their best effort on the night, but with a huge size disadvantage White House would escape with the win.

“We were killed down low. White House had a huge size advantage. Pierre Fowler did a great job filling in and providing some great energy, but without Smallwood we were limited in the game,” Head Coach Scott Steinbrecher stated.

“This is a talented White House team, and I am proud of how the boys continued to fight all night long even with this sizable disadvantage they never gave up,” Steinbrecher replied.

Leading the Panthers in score was Dawson Kennedy with 8 points, Hunter Hicks 6 and LeCyrus House with 5 points.

“We will continue to work hard in practice and we will learn from this game, these guys show up to work every day and they will improve,” Steinbrecher commented.