Lakeside held both their homecoming and senior night events Friday, but it won’t be their final home game after the Panthers clinched the two-seed in Region 1-AAAAA with a 59-20 win over Bradwell Institute Friday night.
The Panthers found the end zone often in the first half, and Ty Jones got the scoring started with a 21-yard pass to Mikeal Grissom.
A quick three-and-out led to a field goal off of the foot of William Brandenburg, giving the Panthers a 10-0 lead in the first quarter.
BJ Grissom took advantage of a bad punt from Bradwell, and on the following play, took it 20 yards for a score.
Defense gets offensive
At this point, it was 17-0 Lakeside, then came one of the craziest sequences one could witness.
The Panthers’ Lathan Gardner intercepted a Tiger pass and took it in for the score. A few plays later, BJ Grissom snagged an errant Tiger pass and also scored, extending the lead to 31-0.
About 19 seconds after that occurred, Corbin Velez picked up a Bradwell fumble and returned it for six (plus the extra point) to push Lakeside’s lead to 38-0.
So, in about a span of two game minutes, Lakeside scored three defensive touchdowns.
The Panthers finally got the ball back on offense after all of that and Jack Thexton capped off a long drive with a six-yard score.
Bradwell Institute finally got on the board when it returned a kickoff for a touchdown and cut the lead to 45-6.
Cruising to the finish line
It was an impressive first half of football from a team that faced a setback a week ago with its 61-34 loss to Brunswick during the team’s third game in eight days.
Not much happened in the second half because of the running clock, but Ty Jones did catch a pass that went 72 yards, and the Panthers picked up their fourth defensive score of the game with a 99-yard scoop-n-score.
Lakeside (8-1, 6-1) will get to rest next Friday before traveling to Statesboro (4-4, 2-3) on Nov. 8 for its final regular season game. Lakeside will gear up to host the three-seed from Region 5-AAAAA in the first round of the Class AAAAA playoffs.
Statesboro defeated South Effingham 41-7 Friday night.
