EASTHAMPTON — The ball found Stevie Worthley both times the Frontier Regional football team needed a dramatic play.

Frontier stared down a third-and-22 after consecutive tackles for losses by Easthampton with time fading Friday at White Brook Middle School.

The Red Hawks called a screen pass for Worthley. He took off for 40 yards to put Frontier in Easthampton territory with 49 seconds left.

“All I was focused on was getting that first down. We had some good blocks in front of us,” Worthley said. “There was just nothing but green ahead of me.”

Seth Gewanter then pounded out 8 yards before a personal foul set Frontier up at the 20.

The Red Hawks went to Gewanter again. He powered through three tackles to reach the end zone for a game-winning touchdown, his second of the game to go along with 86 yards rushing.

“I knew the end zone was there, and whatever was in my way, I was going to try and go right through it,” Gewanter said.

The score put Frontier up 42-40, but Easthampton still had 36.7 seconds.

The previous four drives ended in two touchdowns for each team, and Frontier (2-0) and Easthampton (0-3) had been alternating scores all night.

It looked like plenty of time for quarterback Max Weir and the Eagles.

He had already thrown for two touchdown passes and 131 yards in the game. Weir opened the drive with an incompletion before Nick Tausenfrund (10 carries, 47 yards) picked up 5 yards, forcing the Eagles to use their final timeout.

Weir then threw another incompletion, which shrunk two hours of a football game down to one play on fourth-and-5.

He took the snap and looked right. It was a hard fake designed to move the defense and hopefully spring a wide receiver on the left.

Worthley didn’t bite.

He sprinted right from his linebacker spot and jumped for the ball, falling in front of a raucous Frontier sideline and fan section with it cradled under his right arm.

“I knew this was the last play, this was it,” Worthley said. “I watched him the whole way. I kept my eye on the ball the whole time and jumped on it.”

Easthampton running back Camden Kelly gave the Eagles the lead two minutes before.

He took a 30-yard run to the house with 2:36 left to put the Eagles up 40-36. Kelly finished with 97 yards rushing and three total touchdowns.

Two came on the ground, and the third was an 80-yard kick return in the second quarter.

“He does a lot of different things well for us,” Easthampton coach Matt Bean said.

David Helems also did his part to try and engineer a dramatic win for the Eagles. He caught five passes for 115 yards and two touchdowns.

The second put Easthampton up 34-30 with 8:50 to go.

Frontier’s Aaron Landry upstaged that with a 27-yard touchdown run 3:20 later. He finished with 203 yards and three scores on the ground.

“I love that kid, couldn’t do it without him,” Worthley said.

That set the stage for Kelly, which set the stage for Worthley’s theatric finish.

“You’d always rather roll over teams, but times like these are when you really come together and work as one,” Worthley said. “You just really build on that teamwork mentality.”

The Red Hawks play at Franklin Tech at 1 p.m. Oct. 1, while Easthampton will make a decidedly longer trip looking for its first win.

The Eagles play at Dennis-Yarmouth on Oct. 1 in South Yarmouth, a 164-mile ride from Easthampton.

“I need to give these kids confidence and I need them to know that we’ll play anybody and we’ll play anywhere,” Bean said.

Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com.