WINTHROP – Zach Farrington wanted a chance at redemption.

The speedy Winthrop wideout raced up the right sideline midway through the second quarter, beat his defender and was wide open when Jordan Conant’s ball arrived in a tight spiral.

The ball slipped through Farrington’s fingers, bounced hard off the frozen turf and skipped harmlessly toward the Livermore Falls bench.

“I was pretty frustrated I’d dropped it,” Farrington said. “It was a perfect ball. I was just like, ‘Come on, give me another try.'”

Less than three minutes into the fourth quarter, after playing a solid defensive game, Farrington got his chance. Conant dropped back to pass at the Livermore Falls 36 and lofted the ball into the front right corner of the end zone. This time, Farrington made the catch, sealing the Ramblers’ eighth victory of the season, a 16-0 win over the rival Andies.

As usual, despite some rare offensive woes, Winthrop’s defense clamped down.

“Once we saw they were running iso, the ends could keep it contained,” Stoneton said. “Everything’s clicking for us on all cylinders on defense right now, and that keeps us in games, honestly. As stupid as that sounds, it allows our offense to feel it out a bit. Our defense is winning games for us right now.”

“It was a good, hard-hitting, clean game,” Livermore Falls coach Brad Bishop said. “We moved the ball a bit at the end of the game, but they have a little bit better athletes at certain spots.”

Livermore Falls fullback Kyle Stebbins still nearly managed 96 yards on 26 carries, though that was about the extent of the Andies’ (4-4) attack. They finished the game with 111 total offensive yards.

“Those guys run hard; they always do,” Stoneton said. “Those kids come down here, they come low to the ground and they block well. They don’t go down easy.”

The Ramblers’ (8-0) offense didn’t do much better early on, either, stumbling forward for just 44 yards in a speedy, scoreless first half.

“We had a couple of dropped passes and penalties that killed our drives,” Stoneton said. “We were hurting ourselves and not able to keep our momentum going. At halftime we said, ‘Look, these guys are in a rhythm, we’re not, let’s take them out of it.'”

Jake Steele fixed that in a hurry.

On Winthrop’s first possession of the second half, Steele broke a run off the left end for 37 yards and the game’s first touchdown, capped by a Farrington extra point.

Farrington’s foot made it 10-0 on a field goal with 1:18 to play in the third quarter following one of Livermore Falls’ nine punts.

The Andies got as close as the Winthrop 16-yard-line after Farrington’s TD catch, but a pass from quarterback Nate Michaud to Stebbins fell incomplete, and they turned the ball back over to Winthrop on downs.