1.16.5 Modded Server Won't Load Plugins

I just started working on this server yesterday, and have made some progress but not as much as expected. I have lot’s of experience working on servers, but just haven’t messed with minecraft servers much in the past few years.
I’m trying to make a pixelmon server for me and a bunch of friends, and I wanted some plugins along with it. I downloaded spongeforge, and put it into the mods folder. Now whenever I launch the server using the run.bat file, the mods work when using “forge.jar” to launch it, and no plugins work. Plugins only work if I launch it with paper.jar, but then the mods don’t work. When launching I noticed a few mentions of sponge, one that caught my eye was
“Missing data pack mod: spongeapi
Missing data pack mod:sponge”
Not sure what to do to fix it, but any support would be appreciated. If there is anything I left out or you would need to help me, please just ask I should be available

Please note that sponge can only run sponge plugins.

You can download sponge plugins from our ORE page

Please note that you can only run plugins compatible with API 8.x