Late in the season, the Pilgrim football team proved that it wouldn’t let a tough challenge turn into an insurmountable one.

The Patriots proved it again on Thanksgiving morning.

Hosting Warwick Vets in the annual rivalry game, the Pats didn’t make it easy on themselves. They racked up almost 400 yards of offense, but key penalties, crucial turnovers and stalled drives left them without much to show for those yards. Late in the third quarter, the game was still scoreless.

But for this Pilgrim team – a team that fought through a mid-season coaching change to deliver a strong stretch run – a challenge like this was nothing new.

The Pats met it head on.

John Paliotte broke the scoreless tie with 2:38 left in the third quarter when he caught a screen pass from Justin Martin and weaved 16 yards to the end zone. The Pats were finally over the hump and they picked up speed from there, scoring twice in the fourth quarter on their way to a 22-0 victory.

By the end of it, the early missteps were a distant memory, a starting point but not a defining characteristic.

“You can only have so many penalties and so many turnovers before it starts to really wear on you,” said Pilgrim head coach Jack Paliotte. “But credit to our guys. They stuck with it. They came out and executed when they needed to.”

And that made all the difference.

Coming into the game, the Pats figured to have a slight edge. They’d won two of their last four games and had been close in the other two. On the other side, Vets was still looking for its first win.

In the early going on Thursday, neither team could get the upper hand. While Vets’ quarterback Chris Fraser completed four of his first five passes, the ’Canes struggled to sustain anything. They had 51 yards of offense in the first half.

Meanwhile, the Pats did have their offense in gear; they just never found their destination. Whether it was Mike Natale’s 39-yard run or Derek DeSilva’s 54-yard scamper, the Pats were moving the ball. But their two best drives of the first half ended in turnovers on downs.

“Against a team that hasn’t won all year, you don’t want to give them hope,” Paliotte said. “I told our guys at halftime, ‘You’ve given them a breath of air that they shouldn’t have.’”

After halftime, the script didn’t change right away. The Pats moved into Vets territory on their next drive but a holding penalty derailed them.

On the ensuing punt, a Vets player touched the bouncing ball and the Pats pounced on it at the 9-yard line. Two plays later, Natale fumbled and Vets recovered.

Jacob Ahern got Pilgrim another chance when he made a diving interception on the fourth play of Vets’ next drive. But even then, after the Pats moved inside the 10-yard line, there was a roadblock. A holding penalty gave them first-and-goal at the 20-yard line.

For a team trying to reverse a trend, that wasn’t a great place to start.

“You could see a real frustration on our team’s faces after that penalty because they smelled the goal line,” Paliotte said.

In the huddle, that frustration turned to resolve.

“I told the guys, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s nobody’s fault. Just stick together,’” Martin said. “We just focused on coming back and executing the next play.”

It took a little longer than that, but eventually that’s what the Pats did.

On third-and-goal from the 16, Martin hit Paliotte on a screen pass. After making the catch, Paliotte cut back against the grain, found a seam and waltzed into the end zone.

“The rocket screen was there and the kids executed it,” Jack Paliotte said. “That was a huge play.”

On the Vets sideline, head coach Mike Nappa could see that momentum had finally picked a side.

“When we touched the punt, I think that was really the turning point,” Nappa said. “The kids were down, even after we held them. We had a bad series, they got it back and that was it.”

The Pats never let go of their momentum. After a quick three-and-out on Vets’ next drive, Natale broke loose for a 54-yard run that brought the ball to the 11-yard line. Martin eventually scored from two yards out on a quarterback sneak. He also ran in the two-point conversion to make it 16-0.

That deficit didn’t stop Vets from attempting a comeback. After the teams traded punts, the ’Canes put together their best drive of the night. Fraser completed seven of eight passes as they moved deep into Pilgrim territory. Chris Moshier, Ben Shalvey, Dante Vita and Mike Williams all made catches.

But on a fourth-and-one at the 5-yard line, Fraser tried a quarterback sneak and had the ball stripped. Jon Stevens grabbed it and took it to the Pilgrim 25. A 51-yard pass from Martin to Ahern moved the ball into Vets territory, where Martin found Alex Leddy for a 20-yard touchdown.

“The strip was big because if we score there, maybe we can make it interesting,” Nappa said. “We just couldn’t push it in. We’ve struggled all year on offense. I thought if we could score early, we had a shot. But give Pilgrim credit. They did a good job defensively. They were more physical than us.”

The Pats limited Vets to 152 yards of offense. Without Vets’ big fourth-quarter drive factored in, that total was 89.

“We hadn’t done this all year, but we actually went to man coverage,” Paliotte said. “We thought we were a little more athletic than they were and we felt like we could man up with them. Then we blitzed somebody every time based on certain formations. We kept the pressure on him and I think we didn’t really give him much to see.”

On the other side, the Pats had one of their best offensive days of the season. They tallied 376 yards, with 256 of those coming on the ground. DeSilva had 85 yards on just six carries while Natale led the way with 142 yards on 16 carries.

“I’ve had [Natale] since PAL,” Paliotte said. “This is the way he’s always played – he’s 140 pounds of nothing but toughness. I’ve got two other good backs, but when push comes to shove, the ball’s getting in Mikey’s hands. I think Vets knew it, but credit to him for bouncing off and reading his blocks right. He’s a tough cookie and he plays the game the way it’s supposed to be played.”

Natale and the rest of the team’s 10 seniors were just happy to go out on top.

“This means everything,” Natale said. “Last year, I got hurt and we had a tough loss. So it means a lot to get the win for all of us and all the fans.”

Pilgrim and Vets have now traded wins in each of the last four years. The 22-point margin this year is the largest in the series for the Pats since 2004, when they won 35-13.

For Vets, the loss wrapped up a tough season, but one that Nappa hopes can turn out to be productive.

“It’s hard to say you’re making progress when you’re still losing games, but you can see it,” Nappa said. “We had some injuries and that hurt us, but I think our young kids know what it takes now.”

As for the Pats, the strong finish and the hurdles they cleared added up to a successful year.

“I told the kids in the huddle, ‘You met a very big challenge early in your life about eight weeks ago. You accepted the challenge and you succeeded. There’s nothing that’s going to come your way in life that you can’t handle after this,’” Paliotte said. “They were there every day. Even the last practice, they were there and giving 110 percent. You don’t always get that from a team that’s won two games. I give them a lot of credit.”

That effort allowed the Pats to close out their season with one final good memory – even if it wasn’t easy to come by.

“We had speeches from former players last night, and everybody still thinks about their Thanksgiving game,” Martin said. “The seniors, we’re always going to remember this.”