GARDINER — The win could have been cleaner. The celebration, though, was all the same.

Penalties, turnovers and other miscues defined the 146th installment of the Cony-Gardiner football rivalry Friday night at Hoch Field. Yet that was of little bother to a jubilant Rams team that was as loud as could be after defeating the Tigers 21-6 for their sixth straight victory in the matchup.

“That was some ugly offense a lot of that game for both teams, for sure,” said Cony head coach B.L. Lippert. “It came down to some key plays and some key penalties, and we were able to get it done. We have some things to clean up, but it feels good to walk out of here with a win.”

Both quarterbacks, Cony’s Parker Morin (5 of 14, 103 yards, touchdown) and Gardiner’s Asher Nagy (10 of 17, 114 yards, touchdown) threw three interceptions on the evening. Anderson Noyes had 118 yards and a score on 34 carries for the Rams, who outgained the Tigers 239-217.

After Nagy threw an interception to Cony’s Zack Wadell on the opening drive, Cony (4-3) went three-and-out before punting to pin Gardiner deep in its own territory. Four plays later, Kaiden Veilleux blocked a punt that was recovered by Da’Marion Raymond in the end zone to put the Rams up 7-0 midway through the first quarter.

“He broke his thumb back in the first JV game and was out for a while, but he has a nose for the football,” Lippert said of Raymond. “We put him on punt block for the first time in his career, and I saw the ball pop up in there and said, ‘Was that 20 who grabbed that?’ That’s a pretty cool moment for a sophomore.”

Gardiner (3-4) would see its next two drives stall around midfield but forced a three-and-out and a Morin interception to get the ball at its own 30 with 10 minutes left in the first half. Ten plays later, the Tigers were in the end zone as Nagy found Henry Gingras (three catches, 51 yards) for a 24-yard score with 4:35 remaining.

Neither team scored the rest of the first half, but after Morin completed a big screen pass to Ethan Demmons on the first play of the second half, controversy arose. Morin threw an incompletion on fourth-and-11 from the Gardiner 15, but the Tigers were called for unnecessary roughness to keep the drive alive.

It was a call, Gardiner head Pat Munzing said, that wasn’t unanimous amongst the officials — and on the very next play, Cony took advantage as Morin threw an 8-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Benedict in the corner of the end zone to make it 14-6 with 9:48 left in the third quarter.

“That penalty in the end zone really changed the entire game,” Munzing said. “It’s tough in a game as close as it is to have something like that happen. I know they see it one way, but to have something like that completely change the context of the game that’s not even there, that’s crushing.”

Gardiner, which committed nine penalties for 60 yards, would never cross midfield again. With Noyes, who had 87 of his 118 yards after the break, heating up for Cony, the Rams made it 21-6 with 8:17 to go in the game as the sophomore scored on a 1-yard run. 

Instead of kicking away, Cony then caught the Tigers off-guard with an onside kick that it recovered at Gardiner’s 35-yard line. Noyes then ran the ball 10 times on the Rams’ final series, which failed to yield points but effectively ran out the clock on the home team.

“It’s the same thing I said in Week 1: It was just grit,” said Noyes, referencing Cony’s season-opening win over Messalonskee in which he also iced the game in the second half. “Our line was absolutely incredible; I couldn’t have done anything without them. It was a great team win tonight.”

The win pushed Cony past Gardiner and Lawrence and into second place in the Pine Tree Conference with one game to play. Finishing as the No. 2 team in Class B North would give the Rams a bye in two weeks as they would advance straight to the regional semifinals.

Ugly or not (Cony had seven penalties for 50 yards), taking home the boot and securing their longest winning streak in the rivalry since taking eight straight from 1927-34 was a good way for the Rams to gain postseason positioning. It was also a welcoming feeling after a 38-14 loss to Medomak Valley last week.

“We had energy; we had want,” Noyes said. “We kind of got it handed to us (against Medomak), and we wanted to be good; we wanted to win this game. We hate these guys, and they hate us, so it was a really important game for us.”