Jason Roeder made sure his players remembered a barrage of Nazareth students storming the BASD turf last Friday night.

In the aftermath of a 35-33 victory by the Blue Eagles on Freedom’s home turf, the Pates brass was left ruminate in their first loss of the season to an upstart Nazareth squad that traded blows all night and made a final defensive stop on a two-point conversion to preserve victory.

That victory came largely on the shoulders of senior quarterback Anthony Harris, who spearheaded the Nazareth (4-0) attack with 235 yards passing and two scores to go along with 73 rushing yards and TD, becoming the school’s all-time TD passing leader in the process with the 61st of his career.

Despite Harris’ night under center and a 35-20 lead early in the fourth quarter, Freedom (3-1) did not give up.

Jared Jenkins hooked up with Matthew Russin for a 29-yard TD with 10:18 left in the game to cut the lead down to 35-27. After holding Nazareth on its next drive, Freedom continued to show its championship mettle with a six-play, 71-yard drive, capped by a 49-yard TD run by Jalen Stewart with 1:53 to go to make it 35-33.

Just as all the momentum was on Freedom’s side, the Blue Eagles came up with a defensive stand on the two-point conversion when Jenkins rolled to his right only to see his throw get batted down to preserve the two-point lead.

Still, Freedom had all three timeouts left and forced Nazareth into a 3rd-and-1 situation from its own 19, only to move their linemen out wide for a swinging gate, which saw Jaden Cabrera pick up 14-yards to ice the victory.

“You got to give credit to them because they were the better football team,” said head coach Jason Roeder. “I’m not sure if we were missing a gear tonight. Nazareth just did a better job.”

Roeder has always used losses to galvanize the troops and he hopes that this setback will give the team a spark moving forward.

“We’ll see what happens,” he said. “I know how we’ve responded in the past. How do we handle our bus ride home, our weight room sessions and practice next week. Our mindset is always about what we can control and this one is in the books. Let’s see how they come out next week.”

After four straight weeks of tough action against Becahi, Liberty, Parkland and Nazareth, Freedom gets back-to-back weeks without seeing a top tier team in the EPC with Whitehall (0-4) this Friday and Pocono Mountain West (1-3) the following week.