By Randy Whitehouse,Staff Writer

RUMFORD – Jim Aylward turned to a stunned and audibly frustrated Mountain Valley sideline and reminded them it was far too early to get discouraged.

“Settle down,” the Falcons head coach told his players after they’d witnessed Greely’s go-ahead touchdown. “You guys never been behind?”

Well, no, not this season, until Greely scored the first points against the Falcons’ starting defense of the season and took a 7-6 lead late in the third quarter of Friday night’s Campbell Conference tilt.

Aaron Arsenault got Mountain Valley back up off the canvas, though, with a 35-yard touchdown run that proved to be the game-winner, as the Falcons pulled out a 20-7 win over the hard-nosed Rangers at Hosmer Field.

“Greely scored and for the first time in a couple of years I thought our kids started to doubt themselves,” Aylward said. “But you know what, the great thing about football is you have to keep going. I’m very proud of how our kids played in the fourth quarter.”

Andy Shorey picked off a pair of Erik Goranson passes in the second half and Arsenault finished 181 yards and three touchdowns on 33 carries as the Falcons (5-0) knocked the Rangers (4-1) from the unbeaten ranks.

The Falcons outgained the Rangers, 320-22 (including -8 yards rushing) and collected 16 first downs to Greely’s one. But those numbers don’t give the Rangers the credit they deserve for standing toe-to-toe with the physical Falcons.

“Mistakes killed us in the second half with those interceptions,” said Greely coach Shawn Austin. “Maybe we can figure out a way to beat these guys at some point in the future.”

They may have at least given themselves some clues last night. Defensively, Greely sold out on the run, sending nine or 10 men to the line at the snap on many plays. Led by linebackers Chris Martin and Will Gleason, they stopped Arsenault and fullback Travis Fergola (15 carries, 57 yards) for no gain or negative yardage nine times.

“I thought they had a lot of weapons offensively, but man, the way some of those kids played defense for them…,” Aylward said.

“It was really frustrating,” he added. “We realized real early that after some initial success, we couldn’t run outside on them. They were just coming. Then once they attacked the middle, it opened up the outside again in the fourth quarter.”

The Rangers figured out early that the Falcons were calling their snap counts at the line of scrimmage, giving them an early jump off the ball. Aylward and Arsenault had an animated discussion on the sideline about this just before the diminutive senior broke off his 35-yard TD run down the left sideline.

“We were calling our green up a lot, our cadence, and every time we’d end up with nine guys, 10 guys (trying to stop the run),” Arsenault said. “So we just stopped calling our green up and just started picking up better blocks. The line was unreal tonight.”

Even though they were outnumbered at the point of attack for much of the night, the Falcon line of Kyle Dow, David Smith, Chris Taylor, Brendan Bradley and Thaddeus Bennett eventually wore down the Rangers. The Falcons took advantage by putting up an insurance touchdown on a 27-yard run by Arsenault with 4:50 to go. Shorey sealed it on Greely’s next play with his second interception.

Turnovers hurt the Falcons in the first half and the Rangers in the second. Gleason recovered a fumble and blocked a punt in the first quarter to help keep the game scoreless. The Falcons finally got on the board after Justin Staires’ 27-yard punt return set up Arsenault’s five-yard TD run off left tackle and Mountain Valley took a 6-0 lead into halftime.

The Ranger offense finally started to make progress late in the third quarter, recording their first first down with 3:01 left in the third quarter, then recovering a fumbled punt that set them up with their best field position, at the Falcon 24. On the next play, Goranson found Andre Lavoie over the middle and a step ahead of the Falcon secondary for Greely’s score, a play that finally put them into positive total yardage. Matt Harris added the extra point to put Mountain Valley on the short end of the scoreboard for the first time in 2005.

Shorey pulled the momentum back in Mountain Valley’s favor on the Rangers’ first series of the fourth quarter, grabbing his first interception and returning it to Greely’s 35 just to set up Arsenault’s go-ahead touchdown.