Everything was all set for Petrides to close out its first ever undefeated season in Saturday’s PSAL A championship game against Springfield Gardens.

While playing on a neutral field, the Panthers only had to travel to St. George and Curtis HS for the contest. They entered with a 10-0 overall record, which included a 15-0 victory at Springfield Gardens on Oct. 21.

And Petrides received an early gift when the Golden Eagles took the opening possession and rattled off a 21-play drive — all runs, with 14 of those coming from junior Jaylen Morrison in a sign of things to come — only to have quarterback Latrell Washington fumble into the end zone on a left sweep two plays into SECOND quarter.

The Panthers needed just six plays to capitalize, including Ryan Alexander’s 42-yard run and a 9-yard TD jaunt, to take a 6-0 lead. But Springfield Gardens used 13 plays to go 75 yards on the ensuing series, capped by a Morrison 1-yard scoring plunge and conversion run for an 8-6 advantage that the Golden Eagles would never lose en route to a deceiving 30-6 championship victory.

“To come in with a chance at a perfect season and then to have an ending like this makes it seem like the year was a failure,” said Petrides head coach Dave Olah. “But not if you look at the bigger picture.

“Still, I would have loved to have finished at 11-0.”

It was deceiving because the Panthers (10-1) would stay within that same margin until midway through the fourth quarter, “but we couldn’t get stops when we needed to,” said Olah, who was hoping to secure the school’s second football title, to go with the crown won in 2019. “They had size, and they used it on us.”

The Golden Eagles (10-1) converted their first four fourth-down tries, topped by an 8-yard right counter run by Dishawn Shields on fourth-and-7. Morrison followed with an 8-yard TD tote, and when Travis Morgan kicked the extra point, the Queens school was up two scores at 15-6 with under six minutes to play.

The diminutive Morrison would finish with an astounding 40 carries for 213 yards. “They did an awesome job of controlling the ball,” said Olah of Springfield Gardens, which held a 21-6 edge in first downs for the afternoon.

Moments after Morrison’s touchdown, the Panthers had a chance to penetrate SG territory, but a Jaedin Rivera bomb to fellow senior Justin Alvarez wasn’t caught near midfield. Two plays later, the Golden Eagles intercepted, and Shields would follow with a 16-yard TD scamper. A Matthew Saunders pick-6 in the final minute completed the reversal from the regular season.

“Things went our way this year, but not today,” said Olah, whose squad also had a chance right before halftime to recapture the lead as a 23-yard run by Rivera and a 38-yard reception by Michael Giordano helped give the Panthers a first-and-goal from the 9 in the final minute. But the drive ended on a fourth-down sack of Rivera at the 12.

“If we had been able to punch it in there, maybe it’s a different story,” said Olah, whose Panthers had never trailed at the intermission all season before Saturday. “But we knew this would be competitive. In the [15-0 Petrides win in October], Springfield Gardens had two touchdowns called back on them. And they were just the better team today.”

Olah felt the worst for his seniors — the last group of kids who were affected by the Covid pandemic.

“A lot of them missed a year and a half of football,” said the coach, who will almost immediately shift from coaching football to guiding Petrides’ highly successful wrestling program, which will feature about 15 gridders.

“Hopefully, those [football-playing wrestlers] will build off the success we had here, while also thinking about this [painful] feeling. Hopefully, they’ll use this experience to push the other wrestlers a little harder.”