Not often does a team score touchdowns on offense, defense and special teams in one game.

Matthew Blackert did that in one half for Newman on Saturday.

Blackert, a junior running back and linebacker, led the Comets to a 46-7 win over Mercer County at Roscoe Eades Stadium’s Prescott Memorial Field in Sterling with three touchdowns: a 69-yard rush, a 61-yard punt return and a 62-yard fumble recovery.

The win for the Comets (5-1, 3-1 TRAC Rock) comes a week after dropping its first game of the season at Rockridge.

“We really set the tone high this week since we came off a loss last week against a really good team,” Blackert said. “This whole week we were working on staying focused and challenging each other to let the game’s speed be our speed all of the time.”

Blackert’s 69-yard rushing score came on the Comets’ first offensive series at the 9:17 mark of the first quarter. Comets senior quarterback Evan Bushman and sophomore tight end Tyson Williams connected on a pair of touchdown passes later in the first quarter – with 4:22 and 1:02 to play – for a 21-0 lead.

After senior defensive back Asher Ernst recovered a fumble at the Golden Eagles’ 32 to force a turnover, Bushman threw to junior Danny Welty on the next play for a 32-yard TD connection and a 28-0 lead after one quarter.

Mercer County (1-5, 0-4) got on the board in the second quarter when senior wide receiver Spencer Andresen caught a 4-yard TD pass from senior quarterback John Baldwin with 6:22 remaining, but Blackert’s two other touchdowns that quarter put the Comets ahead 40-7 at the half.

Blackert’s punt return at 10:19 saw him catch the punt over his head before marching in for the score, and his fumble recovery at 1:25 came after junior defensive back Rylan Alvarado stripped the ball from a Golden Eagles’ runner.

The Golden Eagles only had three plays of more than 10 yards in the first half against the Comets defense, and allowed only one more such play in the third quarter.

The Comets’ final score came when Blackert stripped another ball with 1:31 in the third quarter that was scooped by senior defensive lineman Jacon Payne, who ran 55 yards.

“We really emphasized a lot of drill work this week,” Comets junior defensive lineman Matthew Murray said. “We did a lot of tackling and did a lot of strip drills, and that showed when we had two strip [touchdowns] today. Defensively, it’s a lot easier when we have trust in each other and really study, focus and watch film – and I think it really paid off this week.”

Blackert and Bushman each tallied more than 100 yards of offense in the first half, Blackert on the ground and Bushman in the air. Golden Eagles senior running back Tannen Whitehall led his team’s offense with 58 yards on 17 carries, but his team is in serious playoff jeopardy with five losses and all but assuring the school’s first back-to-back losing seasons since the Aledo-Westmer consolidation in 2009.

“It’s not what we wanted or expected,” Whitehall said. “There’s a lot to learn from it and we just got to focus on next week. Their D-line had a lot of penetration early on, and we just couldn’t get the plays done that we worked on.”

Newman plays at Riverdale in Week 7, a game in which the Rams (4-2, 2-2) are looking to secure a fifth win for the first time since 2011.

Despite the win, coach Mike LeMay saw areas of his team’s performance that could use improvement, emphasizing to them in the post-game huddle that next week marks the final third of the regular season.

“Obviously the outcome favored us, but there were still a lot of things that we could get better at,” LeMay said. “We’re just running out of time to get better at those things to get them back to where they are playing confident ball, so we just got to make sure we’re taking the steps to make that happen.”

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Newman’s Rylan Alvarado knocks the ball out of Mercer County QB John Baldwin’s hands for a fumble Saturday, October 4, 2025. (Alex T. Paschal)