CHAMBERSBURG — Harrisburg piled up five touchdowns and 33 points in the second quarter Friday night.

Brax Makosy

And that was more than enough to overwhelm Chambersburg, 46-0, in a rainy Mid Penn Commonwealth football game at Trojan Stadium.

The Cougars (9-1, 6-0 MPC), who sewed up the Commonwealth title with the win, returned a pair of fumbles for touchdowns and also collected three interceptions. Harrisburg will likely be the No. 2 seed in the District 3 Class 6A playoffs, which begin next week.

Chambersburg finishes with a 2-8 record, 0-7 MPC) after seven straight defeats.

Trojan coach Mark Luther said, “We had said we needed to play a perfect game, but we had all those turnovers, even though the weather was not as much of a factor as we thought it might be.”

The first fumble return for a score came on Chambersburg’s second possession when the Cougars’ Terrell Reynolds sacked quarterback Riley Harmon with a big hit and Tyshawn Black picked the loose ball up at the 18 and ran it in.

It remained only 7-0 until Harrisburg scored on the first play of the second period on a 2-yard run by QB Shawn Lee. And then the points kept coming.

Justin Cook picked off Harmon for a second time, leading to a 4-yard scoring run by Kyle Williams and it was 21-0. On the Trojans’ next series, a high snap over the punter’s head gave the Cougars the ball at the 22 and the touchdown came on a 13-yard run by Mahkai Hopkins.

Harrisburg scored again inside 15 seconds before the half on a 10-yard pass from Lee to Hopkins. After the kickoff, Chambersburg ran one play and it was disastrous – they fumbled and the Cougars’ Kymir Williams picked it up and ran 35 yards for a TD to make it 40-0.

“We came out of that first quarter and we weren’t in bad shape — but then it all fell apart for us,” Luther said.

In the second half, with the clock running, the only score came on a 28-yard run by Harrisburg’s Mekhi Newman.

“It is hard to find an explanation sometimes, but we put ourselves in terrible situations with bad throws,” Luther said. “But we’ve also had a lot of plays like this — we run a curl and Riley makes a good read and throws a good ball, but the receiver falls down and the ball goes right to their guy. The whole season seems like it has gone that way.

“Or, like the fumble at the end of the first half. We called a quarterback run to simply end the half. But our left tackle misses his block and the guy in the slot misses his block, and so (QB) Jermere (Jones) is swarmed, and then he doesn’t hold onto the football. It’s very frustrating — maybe is wasn’t meant to be this year.”

For the Trojan defense, Brax Makosy came up with a fumble recovery and made an interception and Paul Hance recovered a loose football on Harrisburg’s first possession. Shea Makosy and Elijah Owens each made five tackles.

Chambersburg’s deepest penetration of Harrisburg’s territory was the 30, on the first drive of the second half, which included two of thee team’s seven first downs.

The top ballcarrier was Brady Deneen, who picked up 40 yards on seven carries. In the rugged weather, the Trojan passing attack went 2-for-15 with three interceptions.

Luther said, “Harrisburg did a nice job, and converted a lot of third-down plays. We knew they’d be a big challenge.

“But this year got to be like Groundhog Day — this week’s game was like last week’s game and so on. We’ll have to put this behind us and get to work on next year.”

Harrisburg 46, Chambersburg 0
Harrisburg                      7     33     0     6     —     40
Chambersburg               0       0     0     0     —      0
First Quarter
H — Tyshawn Black 18 fumble return (Mehkai Hopkins kick)
Second Quarter
H — Shawn Lee 2 run (kick failed)
H — Kyle Williams 4 run (Amir Jones pass from Lee)
H — Hopkins 13 run (run failed)
H — Hopkins 10 pass from Lee (pass failed)
H — Kymir Williams 35 fumble return (Hopkins kick)
Fourth Quarter
H — Mekhi Newman 28 run (run failed)
TEAM STATISTICS
                                                              Harr              Chbg
First downs                                           16                    7
Rushes-yards                                     38-216           34-102
Passing                                                7-13-1            2-15-3
Passing yards                                       89                   14
Total offense                                        305                116
Fumbles-lost                                        2-2                  3-2
Punts-average                                    2-12.0             6-18.0
Penalties-yards                                   2-17                4-35
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Rushing — Harr, Newman 12-74, Hopkins 13-72, Williams 5-30, Nayquan Prather 1-9, Lewis 2-5, Lee 2-3, Justin Cook 1-1, Jesiah Sumpter 1-(-1), Team 1-23. Chbg, Brady Deneen 7-40, Bryce Flenory 13-26, Dayre Senft 3-16, Jermere Jones 4-12, Andy Jean-Baptiste 1-6, Bryce Folmar 1-2, Evan Zullinger 4-1, Riley Harmon 1-(-1).
Passing — Harr, Lee 7-12-0-89, Zakii Lewis 0-1-1-0. Chbg, Jones 1-5-0-9, Harmon 1-9-2-5, Zullinger 0-1-1-0.
Receiving — Harr, Williams 2-33, Cook 3-29, Labron Jones 1-20, Hopkins 1-7. Chbg, Isaiah Brumfield 1-9, Malachi Scott 1-5.
Statistics courtesy of Curtis Ritchey.