South finishes on resounding note

MANCHESTER – Keith Farkas threw four touchdown passes and Nashua South scored 31 second-quarter points while closing out its regular season with a 38-7 knockout of Manchester Memorial on Friday night in the Queen City.

Farkas connected with Armond McRae (three TDs overall) twice for touchdowns and the Panthers ended what was expected to be another playoff season after winning the Division I championship in 2008. Instead, South wraps things up at 3-5 in the division (5-5 overall) and awaits the Thanksgiving Day game with North, which has clinched a playoff spot.

“This has been this year,” Nashua South coach Scott Knight said. “We’ve been a strange bunch, very streaky. We did the same thing in the (Manchester) West game too, where we just exploded.”

Those explosions didn’t seem to come at the right times this season for South, which fell in tight games against Nashua North, Manchester Central, and Londonderry.

“We’re excited for next year, but we expected to be in the mix this year.” Knight said. “We’re disappointed how things worked out, we didn’t get some bounces … We intend to be in the mix next year.”

Leading the charge again will be Farkas, who finished 11-of-17 for 212 yards. Much of those yards went to McRae (110) and Nicholas Frederickson (71), who both had big nights. McRae ran in South’s second touchdown from 2 yards out and later caught touchdown passes of 68 and 35 yards. McRae, just a sophomore, broke several tackles to run his 35-yarder in as the second half came to a close.

“He had a good night,” Knight said of Farkas. “Definitely, once he got going. There was some stuff that was there, that was for sure.”

South scored on every possession in the second quarter, and it was Fredericksen who started the show from 25 yards out on a Farkas pass just 34 seconds in. Memorial’s DeVante Parker fumbled two plays later and South recovered, setting up a Cam Dicecca 27-yard field goal.

Three plays later and Nicholas Haskell hauled in an interception off Memorial’s Frederick Rogers, returning it 56 yards for a touchdown which was called back due to a penalty. South kept the ball and three plays later a 46-yard Farkas-to-Fredericksen connection set up a 2-yard McRae touchdown.

“I don’t know what happened. We had our beset week of practice, the kids were all excited,” Memorial coach Peter Colcord said. “We had senior night tonight, we had some seniors who were pretty emotional, which kind of surprised me, and we came out pretty flat.”

McRae added his two receiving touchdowns on the following possessions and South was cruising, led by its younger team members.

“It’s junior-laden team, and we have some good sophomores on the field as you saw,” Knight said.

“McRae and our center, and also Paradis and all those juniors are back. We had a 9-1 freshman team, so we’re pretty excited.”

Haskell scored on a 9-yard touchdown pass from Farkas to open the second half.