FOXBURG - Karns City came one step closer to making the District 9 football playoffs, but not without some work.

Gremlins running back Josh Fiscus ran for 263 yards and scored three touchdowns as his teammates had to hold off a second-half A-C Valley comeback effort to outlast the Falcons, 42-33, Friday.

"I knew our situation coming in. We had some people beat up," said Karns City coach Ed Conto. "We were going to lose this game if we didn't do something offensively."

The Gremlins opened the scoring with 3:16 left in the first quarter, when Stephen Black threw a 5-yard scoring strike to his brother, David Black.

Later in the quarter, Karns City took advantage of an A-C Valley special teams miscue when a Falcon snap sailed over their punter's head.

The Gremlins swarmed the punter and blocked the kick out of bounds at the Falcons' 31-yard line.

Four plays later, Fiscus plowed his way 7 yards for the score.

"A snap going over the punter's head has haunted us for four years, " said A-C Valley coach Randy Lemmon. "We work on it and we work on it. We haven't even had a bad snap in practice."

With 3:44 left in the first half, Karns City's Mike Stimac pounded into the end zone on fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line.

A key play on the drive was a 52-yard run Fiscus that set up the Gremlins at the Falcon 1.

The Falcons turned the ball over on the very next play from scrimmage when Brad Rembold fumbled.

The Gremlins capitalized immediately when David Black hauled in a 28-yard pass from Stephen Black for a touchdown.

Stephen Black completed 9 of 15 passes for 100 yards and two touchdowns.

"Turnovers usually mean score, especially in high school football," said Conto. "If you turn the ball over, look for a big pass the very next play."

As time expired at the end of the first half, the Falcons' Luis Goncalves dashed and darted for a 14-yard touchdown that closed the Gremlin lead to 35-13 at the half.

Goncalves had 187 yards of total offense for the Falcons.

The Falcons got a turnover of their own midway through the third quarter when Hank Heeter intercepted a Black pass and returned it into Karns City territory.

Seven plays later, Colt Burk, who rushed for 71 yards on 12 carries, bulldozed his way into the end zone from a yard away to cut the Gremlin advantage to 35-21.

The Falcons scored again with 49 seconds left in the third quarter on Brad Rembold's 61-yard catch-and-run to Goncalves.

Rembold finished the game with 99 yards passing.

Rocco Crapis added to the Falcons' big-play barrage with 7:20 left in the game when he dashed around right end and went 59 yards to the end zone.

The A-C Valley running back had 162 yards rushing and two touchdowns.

However, the Falcons comeback fell short when the Gremlins controlled the ball for the last seven minutes of the game.

"This was the biggest game that has been played here for four or five years," said Lemmon. "And we don't start to play until the second half."

"We've got some kids who are playing tough and we've got some kids that need to bring it up. For this program to go to the next level, these kids have to understand they need to turn it up some," Lemmon added.