No miracle finish awaited the Roswell Hornets at the end of their round-two playoff game against Collins Hill this time.

Last week’s last-second field goal propelled the Hornets into the second round, but Roswell fell behind 28-10 early in the second half on Friday and couldn’t quite mount the rally they needed in a 35-24 loss.

“You don’t want it to end. We had a good chance to keep playing, and I hate it for our guys because there’s a group of 20-plus seniors that are not going to play on this field anymore,” said Roswell head coach Leo Barker. “That’s the part that hurts. It’s hard to get over that.”

The Hornets were the latest victim of Collins Hill’s record-setting quarterback Taylor Heinicke. Heinicke passed for 312 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 57 yards and another score as Collins Hill avenged last year’s overtime loss to Roswell in the first round of the playoffs.

Roswell kept pace through the first quarter and a half and held a 10-7 lead with six minutes remaining in the first half after a 1-yard touchdown dive by J.P. Douglas. But Collins Hill responded with a touchdown of its own, and Roswell fumbled the ensuing kickoff to give the ball back to Heinicke with 1:54 left in the first half. Heinicke delivered, completing 5 of 6 passes for 34 yards and rushing the final 13 for the touchdown and a 21-10 lead.

And that was the story all night long. Defensively Roswell couldn’t find a consistent answer for Heinicke.

“That quarterback is pretty good. He’s got some weapons out there, and he’s a weapon,” Barker said. “If you cover them all, he takes off with the ball. If you drop in coverage, then he hits his guys. He’s a weapon for them and he was the difference tonight.”

Down 35-17 early the fourth quarter, Roswell didn’t fold up shop. They went on a 10-play 85-yard drive capped by a 9-yard touchdown run by Andrew Kwateng that cut the lead to 35-24 with 7:37 left to play. Kwateng was brilliant all night as he rushed for 187 yards and one score on 25 carries.

The Hornets followed that touchdown with a perfectly executed on-side kick that kicker Ty Long recovered, giving Roswell the ball at the Collins Hill 48-yard line.

“I knew they were going to bring their hands team out, and if we just ran some guys at them up the middle we would have it,” Barker said of the decision to go for the onside kick. “We practice it all the time. We haven’t used it all year, but I figured if Ty executed it and we got that wall in front of us we would get that kick.”

The Hornets got a first down at the Collins Hill 31-yard line, when Barker went to his bag of tricks one more time. He called for a hook-and-lateral play that set up perfectly in the left flat. But the receiver on the lateral end of the play never got the handle on the pass and fumbled the ball. The Collins Hill defense pounced on the loose ball, essentially ending the Hornets’ hopes of a comeback.

“It would have been a touchdown,” Barker said. “It was set up. I wish he would have caught it because that kid is such a hard-worker.”

The loss ends the Hornets’s season with a record of 7-5. In two trips to the playoffs Barker is now 2-2 and has yet to advance beyond the second round. But he already has his eye on next season and on breaking through that second-round barrier.

“We’ll celebrate what we did and, come January, we’ll be back in the weight room ready to go. I look forward to that. I look forward to building another team,” he said.