NEWVILLE — The Greencastle-Antrim football team got its season off to a fine start Friday night, traveling to Big Spring and coming home with a 28-13 non-league victory.

Austin Wyand

The Blue Devils’ offense put up three touchdowns, special teams added the fourth score and the defense allowed only two touchdowns and held the Bulldogs scoreless in the second half.

G-A coach Devin McCauley said, “It was a good team win, for sure. I’m happy with the guys who rotated in when we had a couple of guys go down with cramps. And some kids made good plays on special teams.”

Greencastle opened the scoring in the first quarter, going up 7-0 when Conner Wright latched onto a touchdown pass of 12 yards from quarterback Logan Alvey, and Jackson Eby kicked the extra point.

“It was Wright’s first game and we utilized his size,” McCauley said.

But Big Spring bounced back with two scores in a row to take a 13-7 advantage with time running out in the first half. That’s when the game flipped to G-A’s side.

On the kickoff, Austin Wyand caught the ball at his 7 and took it to the house, 93 yards away. Eby’s kick gave the Blue Devils a 14-13 lead.

It got better when the Bulldogs messed up the kickoff return, fumbled the ball and Greencastle recovered inside the Big Spring 20. A pass to Wright picked up four yards and a run moved it to the 1. Then, with 0:02 left on the clock, Alvey snuck across the line and G-A had a 21-13 halftime lead.

“Obviously, that was big, getting two scores in about 53 seconds,” McCauley said. “It was a huge turnaround.”

The Blue Devils took the second-half kickoff and marched to another touchdown, this one finalized with a 24-yard pass from Alvey to Seth Stouffer to make it 28-13.

“I thought Alvey did well managing the game in his first start,” McCauley said.

Alvey was 5-for-10 for 42 yards and a pair of scores. Halfback Tavon Cooper did the rest of the work on offense, piling up 146 yards on 20 carries. Also on the ground, Wyand (7 carries, 30 yards), Darren Kline (5-29) and Logan Shifflett (9-24) all contributed.

“Cooper ran hard and was close to breaking a couple of those runs,” McCauley said.

The Greencastle defense did the rest.

They held Big Spring on downs inside the G-A 20 in the third period, then held firm against a barrage of passes from Bulldog QB Ethan Eisenberg in the fourth quarter.

McCauley said, “They have a nice quarterback, but once we got them into a passing situation, we were able to get some pressure on him, got a few sacks and the secondary did a great job in coverage.”

Sal Bangura was able to make three sacks in the game in limited time at defensive end.

The Blue Devils host Berkeley Springs (W.Va.) next Friday at 7 p.m.