Panthers Take Ferris Apart, 45-20

Modern medicine is amazing.

The Mead Panthers dissected Ferris with surgical precision at Albi Stadium on Friday night, rolling to a 45-20 victory in a Greater Spokane League football game.

The Panthers had 387 yards rushing without getting tackled for a loss and finished with 508 total yards. Adam Morris tied a league record with five touchdowns as the Panthers scored on their first six possessions - not counting two plays that ended the first half with Mead leading 35-7.

And all of that with a quarterback who missed last week’s game with a sprained ankle. Jason Lewis came back and hit his first seven passes, including a 22-yard score to Morris, and finished 9 of 11 for 142 yards.

“I knew I could do it,” Lewis said. “The team was confident in me. I had a lot of help from the line and the receivers. The week off helped give my ankle time to heal. I stayed after practice all week and threw with (teammate) Steven Lovell, so I had my timing back.”

After watching his team roll up 28 first downs, coach Mike McLaughlin admitted surprise.

“Truthfully, yeah,” he said. “We felt coming in, this game would show if we were capable of challenging the next few weeks. I said from the beginning (that) this team was better offensively than last year. Early, we had all those injuries, but now even the backups have experience.”

“We were all coiled up,” Lewis said. “We were ready to explode. We needed a game like that.”

In the first game of the doubleheader, which drew 3,971 fans, the improving Shadle Park Highlanders had their best game of the season in a 31-7 win over Rogers.

“It was a great feeling,” Shadle standout running back/linebacker Shawn Kingsbury said. “The hole team went off. We felt it at the end of the Central Valley game (last week). This whole week we practiced hard. Coming in, we knew we’d have a game like this.”

, DataTimes