BROCKWAY — At any level of football, mistakes will cost you—or at least they usually do.

That wasn’t the case in Union/A-C Valley’s playoff matchup on the road at Brockway Friday night. The Falcon Knights fell, 27-20, despite forcing six turnovers.

The first play of the game featured one of those turnovers as Jendy Cuello fumbled his first carry of the night. Union/A-C Valley took over at Brockway’s 39-yard line and it looked like it was going to start the game with all of the momentum. But a false start before the first snap of their drive put the Falcon Knights behind, and four plays later they turned the ball over on downs.

“What happened was we kept getting penalties and we kept getting ourselves in positions where we aren’t comfortable,” Union/A-C Valley coach Dan Reed said. “We do throw the ball, but we’re not going to be a vertical passing team as our mainstay.”

Things were no better for Brockway on its next drive, however. After they strung together a few good plays, Brayden Fox handed the ball right back with his first of four interceptions thrown on the night.

But even after the Falcon Knights started the drive on Brockway’s 29-yard line, they still took 12 plays to find the end zone. Logan Skibinski punched the ball in and Trey Fleming caught the two-point conversion pass to give Union/ A-C Valley a quick 8-0 lead.

Brockway’s offensive woes continued to haunt the team.

After putting together what seemed to be a promising drive, Fox threw his second interception. Brody Dittman then gave the ball back after throwing his first interception of the night. One play later, Fox threw his third interception.

“We just won a ball game with six turnovers, credit to our defense for digging us out of that, and we knew from the start of the year that if we turned the ball over we were going to be in dog fights every week,” Brockway coach Jacob Heigel said. “We can make plays when we need to, it’s just hard putting ourselves in those positions.”

This time it took the Falcon Knights just six plays to find the end zone and extend their lead to 14.

From that point, Brockway shifted the momentum. The scoreboard shifted from 14-0 to 20-14 after Brockway scored on three straight possessions. Blake Pisarcik played a key role in the comeback. Pisarcik threw a 34-yard bomb to Caleb Daugherty, who caught the ball in stride for the Rovers’ first score.

Less than two minutes later, he caught a pass from Fox for a five-yard score to knot the game at 14.

The gut punch came with zero ticks left on the clock in the first half as Daugherty caught his second receiving touchdown of the quarter as time expired to give the Rovers a 20-14 halftime lead. The score turned out to be the difference in the end.

Union/A-C Valley answered back to start the second half, but the theme of the night was the Falcon Knight offense shooting itself in the foot. Theoffense had ten total false start penalties.

“I honestly don’t know for sure what happened with the false start penalties, I was trying to get some clarification as to who it was and I wasn’t getting it,” Reed said. “It always seemed to be towards their sideline, and I’m not saying there weren’t false starts, but I couldn’t see from where I was what was going on.”

Despite the penalties, Dittman found Fleming to tie the game back up and get Union/A-C Valley right back into the game. The next score wouldn’t come until Pisarcik punched the ball in for a rushing score to give the Rovers the lead for good.

Union/A-C Valley didn’t go down with a fight, however.

With just over three minutes remaining in the game, Dittman and the Falcon Knight offense drove all the way down to Brockway’s 10-yard line. With time running out, they continued to be comfortable with advancing the ball on the ground.

On their first play in the red zone, they went into their bag of tricks and tried a double reverse pass that fell incomplete, but the illegal man downfield penalty that came with the incompletion made things a lot tougher.

It meant they had to take shots at the end zone with under a minute remaining. The final shot sailed and with it their season concluded.

“I told these guys I’d fight with them anywhere, we’ve had some really tough losses and our kids continued to come back and fight, and that’s all I can really ask,” Reed said.

Union-AC Valley 8 6 6 0 — 20

Brockway 0 20 7 0 — 27

First Quarter

U/ACV- Logan Skibinski 1 run (Two-point conversion good), 4:49

Second Quarter

U/ACV- Owen Bish 8 pass from Brody Dittman (Two-point conversion failed), 6:50

B- Caleb Daugherty 34 pass from Blake Pisarcik (Zac Cooper kick), 4:30

B- Blake Pisarcik 5 pass from Brayden Fox (Zac Cooper kick), 1:29

B- Caleb Daugherty 31 pass from Brayden Fox (Zac Cooper kick failed), 0:00

Third Quarter

U-Trey Fleming 10 pass from Brody Dittman (Two-point conversion failed), 9:34

B- Blake Pisarcik 3 run (Zac Cooper kick), 0:01

Individual Statistics

Rushing: Union-AC Valley, Max Gallagher 17-50, Owen Bish 3-24, Easton Wingard 4-14, Logan Skibinski 6-14, Brody Dittman 3-0. Brockway, Jendy Cuello 17-83, Brayden Fox 2-15, Blake Pisarcik 2-3, Mattie Brubaker 1-0.

Passing: Union-AC Valley, Brody Dittman 13-37-189-2, Aidan Patton 0-1, Collin Weir 0-1. Brockway, Brayden Fox 13-31-217-4, Blake Pisarcik 1-1-34.

Receiving: Union-AC Valley, Trey Fleming 3-58, Zac Cooper 1-40, Owen Bish 3-37, Logan Skibinski 3-24, Christian Salizzoni 1-24, Easton Wingard 1-3. Brockway, Caleb Daugherty 4-88, Blake Pisarcik 7-99, Isaac Crawford 2-54, Mattie Brubaker 2-14.