Army hands Sprint first loss

There's just something about the military. At least the ground troops anyway. Penn's sprint football team opened its Collegiate Sprint Football League season in West Point, N.Y., on Friday night, losing to Army in a rain-soaked 17-9 defensive struggle. The Quakers (2-1, 0-1 CSFL) were trying for their third win all-time against the Cadets (3-1, 2-0 ). Instead, they saw their overall record against Army drop to 2-41. "We think that we're as good as if not better than them," Penn coach Bill Wagner said. "We just have a young offensive line, and we've got to get better." The Quakers' usually prolific rushing attack netted only 133 yards. Superstar Tim Ortman -- who, despite rumors to the contrary, is human -- ran for most of that yardage, gaining a mortal 101 yards on 31 attempts. The Penn passing game was good for another 101 yards, as quarterback John Kernan completed 6-of-14 passes. Like Penn, the Cadets also gained 234 total yards. However, their entire offense came on the ground as the Quakers held them to 0-for-9 passing. "I think we outplayed them," linebacker and defensive co-captain Dave Klein said. "Our offense was moving the ball well, and [Army] only had two plays that really hurt us." But they were big plays. Army got 100 of its rushing yards on just two plays, both of which were touchdowns. The Cadets scored on the first play from scrimmage, a 75-yard scamper by running back Rodric Pauletto. "On that one, we were in a blitz," Klein said. "He went to the outside and our blitzers ran right by him. We didn't blitz again the rest of the game." Penn answered the one-play drive with a big kickoff return to midfield by freshman Jeff Bagnoli, son of Penn varsity football coach Al Bagnoli. After the drive sputtered to a halt at the 13, senior kicker David Sherman split the uprights with a 30-yard field goal. "Our team did show some poise," Klein said. "After that huge play, we stayed in the game and fought back." Army found the end zone for the second and final time with 2:26 left in the first quarter, when Joe Lusk ran into the heart of the Quakers defense and emerged 24 yards later, staking the Cadets to an 11 point lead. "They just went right up the middle on us," Klein said. "After that play, we switched to a different formation on defense." Wagner shifted the two defensive tackles in, placing them directly opposite Army's offensive guards, to make it harder for the Cadets to gain yardage up the middle. The coach's strategy worked, as Army got no further than the Quakers' 12-yard line for the remainder of the game. Penn scored its touchdown with 6:42 left in the second half, as Kernan threw 18 yards to junior wideout Robert Reeves in the corner of the end zone to pull the Quakers within five. The two-point conversion failed, though, and the Quakers went into halftime down 14-9. That score held up for over 27 minutes in the second half, until Bagnoli muffed a punt at the Penn 22. He dove on the wet pigskin but had the ball wrestled away from him in the pile, and the ball was awarded to the Cadets. The Penn "D" came through again, holding Army to a 39-yard field goal. "It was an outright homer call," Wagner said. "It was really bad." Both Wagner and Klein were quite critical of the officiating and of the Cadets' sportsmanship. "They had the refs on their side," Klein said. "They took some cheap shots. Things like late hits on Ortman and twisting his ankles in the pile." Neither coach nor captain was willing to blame the refs for the outcome, as the final score relied most heavily on Penn's ineffectiveness inside the 20. "We had the ball inside the five, the three, and the 11 on three different drives, and we couldn't put it in," Wagner said. The Quakers' best chance for a second touchdown came on a first-and-goal at the three with 10 minutes left in the game. But on first down and again on fourth down, Ortman carried the ball three yards only to be stopped at the one-foot line. Was Penn stopped short of its repeat title hopes? Not necessarily, but it no longer controls its own destiny. The Quakers must now win the remainder of their CSFL games and hope that Navy can beat Army in the season finale to give Penn a share of the title.

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