CLARION — For a half of football, Karns City battled Clarion toe-to-toe.

But the second half proved to be too much for the Gremlins as Clarion (3-0) outscored Karns City (2-1) 28-0 after the break to take home a 42-14 win at Clarion University’s Memorial Stadium.

“We had some injuries occur — our theory is we want the next man to step up and we had kids do that — but it just kind of hurt us there a little bit,” Karns City coach Joe Sherwin said.

Karns City went into halftime on a high note thanks to a 75-yard kickoff return for a touchdown by Kaden Scherer that tied the game at 14 on the final play of the first half.

But Clarion took the opening drive of the second half and went right down the field, scoring on a 3-yard touchdown run by Austin Newcomb to go ahead for good, 21-14.

“They drove down the opening possession (of the second half) and scored,” Sherwin said. “That kind of took the wind out of our sails a little bit. We weren’t able to recover from there.”

The Gremlins tried to answer back, driving deep inside Clarion territory on their next possession, but the Bobcats’ defense came up with a stop at the Clarion 24-yard line to turn Karns City over on downs.

Newcomb, who ran for 200 yards and four touchdowns (all the scorers came after halftime) then broke free on a 76-yard scoring run to push the Clarion lead to 28-14 with 2:44 left in the third quarter.

“I thought for the most part we did a good job of containing (Newcomb) most of the night,” Sherwin said. “He did get a few runs there in the second half, and that did hurt us. He is a great back.”

Clarion then broke Karns City’s back just under two minutes later when the Bobcats scored again, this time on a 2-yard Newcomb run, on a drive that seemed dead in the water when penalties had Clarion facing a third-and-36 and a fourth-and-18.

But Cal German, who threw for 207 yards and a touchdown, hit Ethan Burford with a 23-yard pass to set up a more manageable fourth-and-13 at the 32-yard line. Clarion then appeared to score when German found Cutter Boggess down the seam for a touchdown, but an illegal motion penalty erased the touchdown.

German, however, hit Boggess again, this time with a 35-yard pass to the 2-yard line. Clarion caught a break on the play when Boggess fumbled the ball out of the end zone for what should have been a Karns City touchback, only to have the referees say Boggess’ knee was down. Video replay seemed to show that wasn’t the case.

Newcomb then scored on the next play to make it 35-14.

A nifty 53-yard run by Newcomb in the fourth quarter set the final score, as Clarion outgained Karns City 438-211 on the night.

The Gremlins did lead 7-0 in the first quarter after a Newcomb fumble set Karns City up at the Bobcats 23-yard line.

Luke Garing capped the short drive with a 2-yard run.

A second Newcomb fumble, this time inside the Karns City 5-yard line, thwarted another Bobcats drive, but Clarion tied the game at seven when German hit Burford with a 40-yard touchdown pass 59 seconds into the second quarter. Burford had five catches for 149 yards.

Clarion then took its first lead with 7.9 seconds remaining in the first half on a 1-yard Kyle Bottaro run, only to see Karns City answer back with the kickoff return for a score.

Anthony Kamenski led the Gremlins with 73 yards on the ground, but was 2-for-4 passing for 16 yards and an interception. Garing chipped in 52 yards rushing on 13 carries and caught one pass for seven yards.

“There is still a long season ahead of us,” Sherwin said. “We aren’t going to give up now. We are going to continue working, we are going to continue to get better and we are going to fix our mistakes we had this game. It is a long season ahead of us, and we still think we can be there at the end.”

Karns City 7 7 0 0 — 14

Clarion 0 14 21 7 — 42

First Quarter

KC — Luke Garing 2 run (Owen Colwell kick), 4:28

Second Quarter

C — Ethan Burford 40 pass from Cal German (Beau Verduill kick), 11:01

C — Kyle Bottaro 1 run (Verdill kick), :07

KC — Kaden Scherer 75 kick return (Colwell kick), :00

Third Quarter

C — Austin Newcomb 3 run (Verdill kick), 8:33

C — Newcomb 76 run (Verdill kick), 2:44

C — Newcomb 3 run (Verdill kick), :53

Fourth Quarter

C — Newcomb 53 run (Verdill kick), 2:26

Individual Statistics

Rushing: Karns City, Anthony Kamenski 11-73, Hunter Rowe 11-34, Zach Blair 3-9, Luke Garing 13-52, Gage Kowski 2-2, Owen Graff 1-1, Kaden Scherer 1-13, Jayce Anders 5-11. Clarion, Austin Newcomb 17-200, Kyle Bottaro 4-6, Colton Zacherl 4-12, Cutter Boggess 2-13.

Passing: Karns City, Anthony Kamenski 2-10-16-0, Brayden Christie 0-1-0-0. Clarion, Cal German 8-132-7-0.

Receiving: Karns City, Brayden Christie 1-9, Luke Garing 1-7. Clarion, Ethan Burford 5-149, Austin Newcomb 1-12, Christian Simko 1-11, Cutter Boggess 1-35.