As for the Hornets’ boys basketball team, they’ve been having a quietly successful season playing in the CCAA Div. 2 East.

On Friday night, Luke Szumigala scored 21 points and hauled in 14 rebounds, but the Forestville Hornets couldn’t overcome freshman guard Josh Haskell’s 30 points as the Franklinville Panthers held on to win in league action, 63-46.

“We dug ourselves a hole,” said Forestville head coach Ralph Jackson. “We were just rushing it. Not getting the ball to our outlets and turning the ball over which led to easy baskets for them.”

It wasn’t an easy start for the Hornets.

OBSERVER Photo by Justin Goetz Forestville’s Travis Drozdziel (3) attempts a contested layup during Friday’s game against Franklinville in Forestville.

Franklinville’s Haskell drilled four 3-pointers in the first quarter alone against the Forestville 2-3 zone, putting the Hornets in a bind early.

“Haskell is their guy,” said Jackson. “We certainly wanted to focus on where he was at but I feel like at times we just lost him.”

Haskell scored 14 of the Franklinville 16 points in the first quarter, to give the Panthers a 16-9 lead after the first period of play.

For Forestville, the slow start was a hard pill to swallow.

“It’s hard to generate offense when you turn the ball over like we did,” said Jackson. “You saw when we got the ball inside good things happened.”

Once the second quarter got going, Forestville was able to establish their presence in the paint.

Szumigala scored eight of his 13 first half points in the second quarter, corralling offensive rebounds and creating second chance points for his team to pull the match closer.

Franklinville’s hot shooting kept them in front as the half drew the a close, making six 3-point buckets en route to a 26-21 lead. Haskell was held scoreless by the Hornets in the period.

“You saw in the second quarter when we did a better job focusing on [Haskell] he didn’t score any points,” said Jackson. “We go on stretches where we do some good things.”

Coming out of halftime, the Hornets where on a mission to get back into the game.

Forestville used their size in Szumigala and Orlando Soto to get eight consecutive points and tie the game at 36-36 in the middle of the third quarter.

“I thought we took advantage of our size in that third quarter,” said Jackson. “We knew we certainly had that size advantage and wanted to give our bigs involved.”

After Forestville tied the game, Franklinville seized control.

Haskell powered his own 7-0 run for the Panthers to end the third quarter, up 43-36.

Franklinville outscored the Hornets 20-9 throughout the fourth quarter, gathering 10 made 3-point field goals as a team throughout the entire course of the game. Haskell scored 16 second half points while Logan Frank added 14 in the half as well to power Franklinville.

For Forestville, Soto closed the game with 12 points and Javier West added six rebounds and four assists.

“We just have to continue to learn,” said Jackson about his team. “We’ll watch the film, we’ll get better. We made some mistakes at some bad times and you can’t do that against good teams and good programs.”

Forestville (5-5, 1-2) will look to get back on track this afternoon when they travel to Steele Hall at Fredonia State University to face Sherman.