Despite a very promising opening drive, the Lawrence Park Panthers continued to be held scoreless in Tier I TDSB Football.

After a miserable 2010 campaign without a regular season score on offence, LP is looking for bigger things in 2011.

On Thursday, we opened up against the defending South Champion Leaside Lancers and dropped a heartbreaking 7-0 defeat. The Panthers dominated early on behind the hard running of Jovan Ross, the slashes of Max Triskan, and a clutch third down conversion by Spencer Smockum.

But after two great drives the offence stalled and wasn't really moving again until Max Triskan stepped in at QB for one series in the fourth quarter.

The real story of the day was our defence. Leaside could muster only a limited rushing attack as linebackers Cam MacDonald and Doug Scully prowled from sideline to sideline. Upfront Kevin Ko and Steve Tweedley applied relentless pressure.

On the whole our DB's also played well with Matt Mikelberg, Daniel Rottman, and Jeff Hocking cementing the air defence.

A 0-0 halftime tie was broken by a single off a missed field goal and an uncoverted TD by the Lancers, which was aided by a senseless roughing the passer call on LP. This heartbreaking penalty came after our D had topped Leaside on third down at our 12. That said the Lancers had been robbed of an early TD, when a clearly caught ball was erroneously called incomplete by the officials.

Next up is Central Tech. New panthers QB Scott VanDeursen has shown significant promise to the Panthers coaching staff. The hope being we can get on track offensively quickly to resume pursuit of our playoff goals!