LISBON FALLS — The Lisbon Greyhounds’ objective against Freeport was as clear as the bright blue sky above Thompson Field Saturday — close down the cutback lanes for the Campbell Conference’s second-leading rusher, Miguel Beckles, and keep the big play out of the Falcons’ arsenal.

The one and only time Lisbon’s defense failed to meet that objective, it let Freeport back in the game. Then, in more typical Lisbon fashion, the Greyhounds turned around and almost immediately took the Falcons right back out of the game.

Tobey Harrington and Scott Eck ran for two touchdowns apiece in the first half as Lisbon rolled to a 48-8 triumph over Freeport.

Leading 20-0 late in the first half, the Lisbon defense let up its only big play of the day. On 3rd-and-6, Beckles took a pitch to the right at his own 30, bounced off a pair of Greyhounds, broke out of an ankle tackle at the 36, then burst through a cutback lane over the middle for a 70-yard TD run that, after the two-point conversion, made it 20-8.

“We know he’s very fast and he made a great run there,” Lisbon coach Dick Mynahan said. “He had three guys hit him and he broke all three tackles. He’s very strong, so we felt fortunate to hold him to one long run.”

After a few moments of self-flagellation, the Greyhounds set out to make up for their mistake the only way they know how. Harrington (13 carries, 110 yards) broke off a 35-yard run on the first play from scrimmage to the Falcon 25. Lisbon called Eck’s (10 carries, 66 yards) number on the next four plays, the last one being a 2-yard touchdown that gave the Greyhounds a 28-8 cushion at halftime.

The defense, led by John Crafts, Joe Doughty and Matt Nicholson, shut down Freeport the rest of the way, although Beckles (11 carries, 110 yards) left with an injury on the Falcons’ first drive of the second half. 

“We worked on (stopping Beckles) all week. We tried a different defense, but it didn’t work out that great for us in the first half,” Mynahan said. “We switched back to our old self in the second half and it worked better.”

Lisbon immediately put Freeport (1-3) in a hole by recovering a fumble at the Falcon 3 on the game’s second play. Eck punched it in on the Greyhounds’ first play to give them a 6-0 lead just 43 seconds into the game. Freeport marched to the Lisbon 44 on its next series but was stopped on 4th-and-4. The Greyhounds took over and marched 58 yards on six plays to take a 12-0 lead on Harrington’s five-yard TD run. 

“We pinned them back deep on the first drive and capitalized,” Harrington said. “We wanted to score every drive.”

After featuring Harrington and Eck for most of the first half, Lisbon QB Luke Caron started to get involved. His 30-yard completion to Chris Whitney set up Harrington’s 3-yard scoring run that increased the lead to 20-0 midway through the second quarter.

“They can both be physical runners for guys their size,” Mynahan said of Harrington and Eck, who are listed at 145 and 160 pounds, respectively. “Another good runner for us is Josh Pomerleau, but we kind of limit him because at 128, 130 pounds, you don’t want to have him get hit eight or 10 times a game.”

Pomerleau made hay on his four runs (47 yards), three of which came on the Greyhounds 60-yard opening drive of the second half. The third run went 13 yards for a score that put the game away, 35-8.

Zack Splude and Kyle Sheehan tacked on TD runs for the Greyhounds, who improved to 4-0, the only unbeaten team in the South Division of the Campbell Conference.

“It’s definitely a big step in the right direction. People didn’t think we were going to go 4-0,” Harrington said. “We’re looking to go 1-0 every week.”