It’s that magical time of the year called football season.

Shippensburg found a whole lot of that magic on Thursday night at Seton Hill as they pounded the Griffins for 713 yards of offense on 102 plays, the second most in school history.

The Raiders (1-0) controlled the clock for the majority of the game, producing 34 first downs to the Griffin’s 17.

Shippensburg’s Blair Brooks led the rushing attack, putting up 133 yards and two touchdowns. The team rushed for a total of 302 yards on the night.

Of the Raiders total yards, 411 came through the air, a positive sign from the team’s new gunslingers Ryan Zapoticky and Chris Lawshe. Zapoticky, a redshirt freshman, completed 9 of 18 for 101 yards and a touchdown. Lawshe, a junior, finished 23 of 34 for 310 yards and two touchdowns. He is the 15th Raider’s quarterback to exceed 300 yards in a regular-season game.

Sheldon Mayer and Trevor Harman, who combined for 21 catches, led the team’s receiving corps. Mayer had 194 yards on nine receptions. He had an 88- yard touchdown late in the first quarter as well, the fifth-longest pass play in school history. Harman picked up 120 yards on 12 plays, with a touchdown pass from each quarterback.

Lawshe tossed two touchdowns in the first quarter. The first, a 10-yard strike to Harman, was followed by a safety by the Griffins on the extra point. The 88-yarder by Mayer put the Raiders up 13-2 at the end of the quarter.

Lawshe added a rushing touchdown early in the second quarter, and after a 65-yard Griffin scoring pass, a Zapoticky-Harman connection with 4:36 left in the half had the Raiders up 27-9.

Seton Hill quarterback Andrew Jackson did his best to keep up, hitting his wide out Erik Kerns for a 53-yard touchdown less than a minute later. But Blair Brooks put the Raiders up 34-16 at the end of the half with a brilliant 49-yard six-point dash.

Jackson came out and threw a touchdown on the first play of the second half, a 23-yard connection with F.J. Williams. But a Brooks rushing score near the end of the quarter put the Raiders back up 41-23.

The fourth quarter featured another Lawshe rushing touchdown that put the game out of reach for the Griffins. Another Raider run after a 97-yard drive had Shippensburg up 55-23, and a Griffin 42-yard passing touch- down with 1:12 in the game brought the final score to 55-30.

This is the Griffin football program’s 11th season; they have had one winning season, when they went 10-3 in 2008. Shippensburg won last year’s match- up 73-27.

“That is a much better team than we played last year,” said Shippensburg Head Coach Mark Maciejewski after the game. “They have some athletes on the field. This was a fight. I knew going into this game they were going to be a better football team.”

The Raiders host their first home game this Saturday against Edinboro at 12 p.m. Edinboro (0-1) lost its first game 38- 24 to 16th-ranked Carson-Newman.

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