The Beatty Hornets lose big against Panthers

The Beatty Hornets faced the always powerful Pahranagat Valley Panthers at home and lost 58-14.

Coming into the game both teams had not lost a game. Beatty had beaten Pyramid Lake the week before and the Panthers were 3-0.

Freshman Tabor Maxwell for the Panthers came in and threw for 297 yards and running back Wade Leavitt ran for 121-yards rushing. The Panthers now have the longest winning streak in the country at 61 wins.

Hornets Coach Leo Verzilli said his team played hard, but had to overcome the injuries of several players. The main injury was to quarterback Jake Zamora who had sprained his ankle the previous week.

“He would come in and play for a bit, but just could not move quickly enough,” he said. “We had Jake on and off. When his ankle began to hurt he would go off. He did not play at all on defense. We had another kid play linebacker, and then our fullback went down and he also was a linebacker. So we were down a fullback, a quarterback and two linebackers. It may have been a better score. I thought we could have held them down better. Their freshman quarterback was fantastic.”

Verzilli believes the other team was just better in every category.

“We played really well and we had a good first half. Even the stuff they broke, we knew it was coming. We had stuff covered and they still completed the passes. They are such a disciplined team that it is unbearable. They completed a few long passes and in the second half they wore us down. They are a very athletic team and they just keep coming,” he said.

The Hornets scored in the first and the last quarters.

“We had two good drives. We turned the ball over at the beginning of the game. We completed a lot of passes. They run a weird zone where they rush a couple of guys and drop everyone back in pass coverage. They do this so well. We completed quite a few passes and did well with the pass blocking. We ran the ball up the gut, but were not very successful around the edge,” Verzilli said.

The next Hornet game is a home game against Beaver Dam, Ariz. The game is on Friday at 7 p.m. Beaver Dam played Sandy Valley and lost 74-28.

Verzilli plans on playing them tough and said all his players should be well for the game.

“We should have Jake back. We will also have our fullback back,” he said. “Everyone will be healthy. We are not taking Beaver Dam for granted. There is no doubt in my mind this football team will win its fair share of football games. Everyone hits and you can always build on that. Everything is positive even in this bad loss they were stronger and faster than we were. They had more athletes than we had at any given time, but our kids did not quit.”