Early in the second quarter, Casey Griffith kicked the football and sent it sailing toward the goal post nearly 50 yards away. It curved to the left, but managed to get over the crossbar for a career-best 49-yard field goal.

That moment of joy, like so many this season, was short-lived.

Parker Nichols ran for two touchdowns, Anderson Shelly returned a kickoff for a score and threw a touchdown pass, and Washington School routed St. Al 40-13 Friday night in Greenville.

Griffith kicked two field goals for the Flashes, but they didn’t score a touchdown until Brandon Teller went in on a 34-yard run with 4 seconds left in the game. By then, the officials had been using a running clock for two quarters and it went to all zeroes during the PAT attempt.

“They’re a really good football team and we didn’t play real well early trying to adjust to their speed,” St. Al coach BJ Smithhart said.

The loss dropped St. Al’s record to 0-4. It’s the longest losing streak since 2012 — it hadn’t even lost back-to-back games since then — and has left the Flashes limping in more ways than one.

Starters Ben Brown, Garrett Breithaupt, Deontay Carson and DeMichael Harris all missed Friday’s game or were severely limited in their playing time. Harris, the star running back who injured his ankle two weeks ago against Pisgah, only had one carry against Washington.

“It’s not so much individual players, and they’re all very good players, it’s the depth that’s an issue when you play a team like that. It makes it tough,” Smithhart said.

The injuries crippled St. Al’s depth, which was evident both in the score and the way Washington dominated the game.

Parker Nichols had two touchdown runs in the early going, and Bailey Black a 23-yard touchdown run to make it 19-0.

Shelly returned the kickoff 86 yards for a touchdown following Griffith’s field goal midway through the second quarter, and a long punt return on the next series set up Shelly’s 22-yard TD pass to Malcolm Shirley.

“We tried to see if we could fix those things, and we haven’t,” Smithhart said of the Flashes’ troubles on kick returns. “That might be the last deep kickoff you see from the Flashes for a while.”

Shirley added a 60-yard TD run to give Washington a 40-3 lead with 3:33 left in the first half, and Washington’s second string made an appearance on the next series as its coaches called off the dogs.

One of the few bright spots for the Flashes was Griffith. He hit his career-best 49-yard field goal in the first half, then a 41-yarder in the third quarter.

Griffith hit 76 consecutive PATs last season, but had been just 5-for-10 on field goals in his high school career before Friday. His previous long was 43 yards. Despite that, Smithhart said he had no doubt about Griffith’s ability to hit from such a long distance.

“This is going to sound crazy, but I expected him to make both field goals. He’s good. He makes those in practice, so I knew he could do it. I wouldn’t have tried a 50-yarder that early in the game if I didn’t think he could make it,” Smithhart said.