There was a moment at the tail end of the first quarter and very beginning of the second when St. Bede Academy seemed poised to get back into Friday night’s game at Eureka despite a rough start and an early 14-point deficit.

A 66-yard Jose De Le Torre kickoff return and a 21-yard keeper from QB Gino Ferrari had the Bruins set up 1st-and-goal at the Hornets’ 4-yard line, and a pair of Landon Marquez slams into the line had St. Bede with third-and-goal at the 1.

The Eureka defense stuffed Marquez on third down, however, then sniffed out a Ferrari keeper on fourth to force a turnover on downs, and the Bruins never found their way into the red zone again in an eventual 35-0 loss at McCollum Field to the host Hornets.

“Twice, actually, we got the ball down there, and we didn’t execute plays where we could have had touchdowns,” first-year Bruins head coach Jack Brady said. “And sometimes, that’s just how the game of football goes.

“[Eureka] came out, they hit us in the mouth, and we just didn’t respond good enough.”

Both teams are now 1-1.

“Our defense rose up,” Eureka coach Jason Bachman said of the goal-line stand. “And you know, we talk about those things all the time – being competitive, and when it gets to there, who are you going to be? It’s you against the other guys, and I felt that our kids stepped up and did what they’re supposed to do."

Eureka methodically, confidently dominated play pretty much throughout, running 62 offensive plays to St. Bede’s 36 and outgaining the Bedans 382-94 in yards from scrimmage, led by a 7-of-10, 100-yard, two-touchdown passing performance and 23-carry, 138-yard, three-TD rushing performance from junior QB Lincoln Knapp.

“Throughout the week, we just had to work hard, work our butts off, and we studied film all week,” Knapp said. “When Friday night came, we just put it all out onto the field and had a good time.”

Knapp’s two first-quarter rushing touchdowns came from 40 and 4 yards out. After defensive lineman Ashton Helberg and linebacker Finn Hoffman teamed up to stop Ferrari for a loss on the pivotal fourth-and-goal play from the 1, Knapp added a 10-yard TD run to make it 21-0 at halftime, then tossed two second-half touchdown passes to Chris Bunting (from 37 and 11 yards) to finish off his big night.

“You say during practice, ‘We’ve got to contain this guy, we’ve got to contain this guy,’ but it’s very hard to simulate that speed in practice while we’re going with our scout o[ffense],” Brady said of Knapp. “Yeah, he’s a great athlete and a heck of a football player.”

Sam Hoffman added 94 yards rushing for Eureka, which bounced back from a Week 1 loss to Dee-Mack heading into next week’s visit to Farmington.

St. Bede, home next Friday for another nonconference contest, this one against North Boone, was led by Marquez’s 44 total yards – 10 carries for 26 yards and one reception for 18. Ferrari finished 3 of 10 passing for 35 yards.

For the Bruins’ defense, defensive lineman Niko Pappas recorded two tackles for loss, while De Le Torre and Stuart McGunnigal notched quarterback sacks on bad-snap broken plays.

“We’ve just got to go back to work tomorrow in the film room, see what went wrong,” Brady said. “All we can do is go back next week and get back to work.”