When the Emmaus football team walked to the halftime locker room, the scoreboard read Emmaus 28, Visitor (Nazareth) 21. But then the wheels fell off.

The next 22 points of the game were scored by the Blue Eagles, and just as the Green Hornets began to battle back in the scoring category, fatigue seemed to set in and Emmaus could not fight all the way back, losing to Nazareth 49-36 last Friday night at East Penn School District Stadium.

“You could just see that fatigue got to us there in the second half,” said head coach Randy Cuthbert. “After we went down, we got tired trying to fight all the way back. It was tough on the kids, but we put that on ourselves. We can’t make the mental mistakes we did against good teams. They’ll make us pay.”

Nazareth quarterback Travis Stefanik threw for 226 yards and five touchdowns in leading Nazareth (3-1 overall, 2-1 EPC) to five straight scoring drives that spanned the second and third quarters. The junior also ran for 201 yards and two more scores. He was tough to stop all night.

Emmaus (1-3 overall, 1-3 EPC) took the early lead behind a strong effort from senior running back Kyle Boney. Running behind a strong and physical offensive line, Boney rushed for 157 yards and four touchdowns before intermission.

But it wasn’t the same story in the second half. Boney added 57 more yards and a score, but the Green Hornet offense just couldn’t keep the groove it had going the first 24 minutes. And the Blue Eagles took a lot of time off the clock with each of their drives in the second half.

“Their two wide receivers [Julian Liaci and Jahan Dotson] are scholarship kids,” said Cuthbert. “We couldn’t sit back and play a vanilla zone against them or they would have murdered us. So we had to try to do something, so we double-teamed them and tried some different things. And that made us weaker against the run.

“You have to pick your poison against them. They’re tough to defend. We knew we’d have trouble matching up with their speed.”

Those two Nazareth receivers combined for 10 catches and three touchdowns.

Derek Scheaffer threw for 114 yards on 8-of-10 passing. Brandon Rapose caught three passes for 52 yards and Stephen Wolfe had two receptions for 55 yards.

Next up for Emmaus is a home contest against Liberty.