Tri-Valley lost an entire football field’s worth of yards against Zanesville on Friday night, much to the dismay of coach Kevin Fell.

After being flagged just once in the first quarter, the Scotties ended the night with 13 infractions for 130 yards. The biggest two of the night came when on a hard hit of Blue Devils’ quarterback Ben Everson drew an unnecessary roughness call, prompting Fell to make it known he did not agree with the call and walk out to the numbers along the Scotties sideline, resulting in another flag.

In the end, the high number of flags thrown did not keep Tri-Valley from staying on a roll to start the 2018 season. But Fell wanted to make a point of how he felt about his team picking up more than a few 15-yard penalties on hard hits.

“We had some tough penalties,” he said. “I’m not quite sure what we’re doing wrong out there. Apparently, Zanesville’s figured it out because they didn’t have any penalties like that and we had four.”

In Week 1, the Scotties were flagged just once, and three times against Morgan in Week 2. While the trend of penalties is on its way up for the time being, guessing the number of flags will continue to grow would be foolish.

It’s also important to remember Zanesville, too, was nailed with 12 penalties of their own, but were not called for any unnecessary roughness or unsportsmanlike conduct infractions. But Fell certainly did not find any solace in that fact.

Looking ahead for this week’s game against Crooksville, the intensity should be far from the same level it was against their arch rival. But, it’s a good idea to see how much yellow gets tossed around the field on Friday.