SHIREMANSTOWN — Greencastle-Antrim played a strong game early, but gradually wore down against Mid Penn Colonial football opponent Trinity.

Lane Barry

The Shamrocks led 21-0 at halftime and stretched it into a 35-0 defeat of the Blue Devils on Friday night at COBO Field.

“Tonight was a rough one,” G-A coach Jason Thurston said. “By halftime the kids were frustrated and we tried to calm them down. But the second half went from bad to worse — the offense wasn’t moving the ball like we did early and the defense started missing more tackles.”

The opening drive for the Blue Devils (1-5, 1-4 MPC) saw them grind out some first downs and run the clock — it took up most of the first quarter — and they got inside the Trinity 20. But an attempt to convert a fourth-down pass was not successful and the Shamrocks took over.

“We stopped them around midfield, and got the ball back,” Thurston said. “But then we fumbled it away and they scored and it just seemed to snowball after that.”

Brandon Harris ran for three touchdowns for the Shamrocks (4-2, 3-1 MPC), on plays of 40, 23 and 8 yards.

A Mason Boyer to Marcus Yeager pass of 9 yards opened the scoring for Trinity, and the final  TD came from Sam Sweppenhiser on an interception return to the end zone.

Thurston said, “They fumbled the ball three or four times, but we could only recover one of them.

“We threw the ball more than usual tonight and I thought (QB Lane) Barry did well. He got the ball out quickly and made some good reads.”

Game statistics were not available.