High-Scoring Flag Football Game Ultimately Goes Lyco's Way

In a flag football game that featured very little defense, a Pennsylvania College of Technology extramural team gave host Lycoming College all it could handle Thursday night.

Lycoming opened the scoring early and added three on the point-after attempt to take a 9-0 lead. Penn College came right back when Tyler Cooklin hit Nick McQuillen on a pass to make the score 9-6. Lycoming scored on a deep pass ... and Cooklin found Rantz Mahaffey on a deep touchdown of his own to bring Penn College closer, 15-12. Following a failed point-after attempt, the Penn College defense started to make a stand but, on fourth down, Lycoming scored again. The two-point attempt was good and Lycoming went up, 23-12. Cooklin hit Jeremy Rall, the three-point attempt was good and Lycoming’s lead was trimmed to 23-21. The next possession saw Lycoming score on a quarterback sneak to extend its lead.

Penn College dipped into its bag of tricks, but it was costly: Lycoming intercepted on a razzle-dazzle play, setting itself up inside the Penn College 20-yard line. The drive stalled, however, when Jalile Best intercepted a Lycoming pass inside the 5 to get the ball back for Penn College. Cooklin took to the air again, connecting with Rall to trim the lead to 29-27. The three-point attempt was good and Penn College found itself up 30-29 with a minute left in the first half. The lead was short-lived, though, as Lycoming tacked on another touchdown and added a two-point conversion to lead 37-30 at halftime.

Hoping to retake the lead, Cooklin was intercepted on the first pass of the second half to set up Lycoming inside the Penn College 2-yard line. Once again on fourth down, however, Lycoming was intercepted by Best. Cooklin then drilled a pass to Dylan Bennett, who outpaced the Lycoming defenders in his downfield run to make the score 37-36. The two-point conversion on a quarterback sneak was good, and Penn College took a 38-37 lead. Lycoming the scored again on a deep touchdown pass and make the score 43-38 and added a two-point conversion to increase the lead to 45-38. Cooklin connected on a long touchdown pass to Rantz, again cutting the lead, but Lycoming fired back and struck again on fourth down to go up 51-44.

Cooklin was not finished, keeping the ball and sneaking into the end zone to put Penn College within one; the point-after attempt failed and the score stayed 51-50. Lycoming added a touchdown and converted for two extra points and found itself up, 59-50. Rantz Mahaffey took a short pass from Cooklin and scampered 80 yards down the sideline to score the Penn College touchdown. The game was 59-56 with only minutes left.

Up by three points, the home team came out knowing it still had the lead. Unfortunately for Lycoming, a deflected pass was intercepted by and Penn College got the ball back with three minutes left in the game. Cooklin hit Jalile Best for a touchdown to make the score 62-59 in favor of Penn College. The point-after attempt failed, just as it did at other times during the game, points that Penn College needed. Why? Because Lycoming got the ball back and scored with one minute remaining to retake the lead, 65-62. Lycoming’s point-after attempt failed and Penn College was granted one more chance.

The challengers marched down the field, playing cautiously as the clock was against them. Moving the ball well, Penn College found itself on fourth and short yardage. Of all the times for it to happen, the snap was mishandled and Penn College fumbled. The ball was pronounced dead –along with any hopes of a comeback. Lycoming took possession of the ball and Penn College came up just short, 65-62.

Members of the Penn College extramural team (in addition to Cooklin, Rantz Mahaffey, Bennett, Best and Rall) were Jared Mahaffey, Brian Sheldon, Steve Moon, Nick McQuillen, Cole Weachock, Zach Weil and Jordan Cole.

Photos and game summary by Jeremy R. Bottorf, coordinator of intramural sports and campus recreation