BY YANEEK SMITH, BEACON CONTRIBUTOR

DANBURY TWP. — Toledo Christian jumped on top of Danbury early on Friday night and slowly managed to grind out a 38-16 victory over the Lakers.

The Eagles (2-1) got on the board on an 8-yard touchdown run by Charlie Duck. The conversion, which came via a run by Jacob Machalski, pushed the lead to 8-0, and TC never looked back.

The Eagles, who controlled the ball for a sizable portion of the first half, made it 16-0 when Duck threw a touchdown pass to Tyler Ryan with 4:24 to play in the second quarter.

TC would score two more touchdowns to take a 30-point lead into the half.

“Momentum works against you or for you in a great way. In high-school sports, it can be profound, it can swing really hard. In the first quarter, we had two different moments where we had them stopped on fourth down and got a pass interference on one of them. Then they got us to jump offsides on a hard count on the

other one,” said Danbury coach Keith Mora. “They had a long first drive, until about 3:00 in the first quarter.

“Then they had the ball again. In the second quarter, they were on their second drive after we came back out and threw a pick-six, and we were down 16-0, and we’ve had the ball for a total of 5-6 plays. I don’t want to say doubt crept into our minds. It kept swinging in the wrong direction for us. We had two interceptions thrown in the first half. We went into the half down 30-0. Our goal is to stop the clock from running.”

After falling behind 38-0, Danny Harris returned the ensuing kickoff 65 yards for a touchdown and recovered the onside kick. Andy Zelms caught a 40-yard touchdown pass to cut the deficit to 38-16.

“In the second half, we came out with a goal that we needed to get out and score quickly. We did push the ball down the field pretty well, but we weren’t able to score. We were able to stop them, and we stopped them on the following drive, and then they scored again.”