By Johnny Sanders, Sports Editor
CLAY – On Friday night, the East Central Patriots welcomed the Evangel Christian Lightning, an 8-man football powerhouse, to Clay City football field in a game that, though there were flashes, the Patriots just couldn’t seem to gain footing.
“When you don’t play well against good teams, this is what happens,” said East Central Head Coach Daniel Smith. “We didn’t play well at all. We had flashes and we are putting in a new offense so we saw some of that.”
It did not take long for Evangel to jump on the board. East Central muffed the opening kickoff and Evangel took over near mid field. 5 plays later, the Lightning struck first blood with a 9-yard touchdown run by Evangel quarterback Will Welch at the 9:51 mark. On East Central’s first offensive play, running back Dominic Paffumi busted an impressive 10-yard run to get a first down. However, the next 3 plays would each be for negative yardage, including a third down sack of quarterback Knox Cooper, leading to an East Central punt.
East Central defensive back Andrew Barksdale picks off an Evangel pass in the end zone.
Photo by: Holly Barksdale
The Lightning used a 32-yard pass from Welch to Clay Stanton that would set up running back Caleb Austin from 11 yards out, where he would score the second touchdown of the game, making it 16-0. East Central would punt once again and Evangel would drive down to the Patriot 17, threatening to score again. This time, a throw into the end zone would be picked off by Andrew Barksdale to give the Patriots the spark they needed. “They had been throwing at him all day,” said Barksdale. “I knew when they put him on my side it was coming that way and I just had to make a play on the ball, and I was able to. I think it’s great that we know we have a spark in us like that. We just have to keep it going and we haven’t done that yet. We just have to capitalize and when we learn to do that, we are going to be electric.”
The second quarter started with East Central finding some rhythm on offense. Paffumi got a 32-yard blast on the first play of the drive and Cooper found his favorite target, Micah Smith, for another 34 yards on the drive. But the Patriots would stall out after back to back negative plays and an incomplete pass on fourth down.
When Evangel got the ball back, it only took two plays for Austin to bust off a 70-yard touchdown to make it 24-0 with 7:27 to go before the half. After a three and out by the Patriots, Austin would find the pay window again, this time on a two-yard run up the middle, making it 30-0 with 2:21 to go in the second. East Central would go three and out again and punt to Evangel, but the Lightning would throw another interception, this time to Smith, before the half. With little time left on the clock, Cooper took two shots but neither connected, sending the teams into the locker room with Evangel in control, 30-0.
Evangel came out of the locker room swinging, taking only a minute and a half to score. Evangel’s backup quarterback, Kemp Swords, would get the score this time from 8 yards out to make it 36-0. Another three and out for the Patriots and Evangel found themselves in the end zone again as Swords would score from eight yards out again. The score would be 44-0 with 4:37 to go in the third and that would be how the scoring would end.
“It’s good film. We will go study it and get better and take it into next week,” said Coach Smith. “We’ve got to tackle better and we’ve got to execute better on offense. It’s not complicated. We believed we could play with these guys. We have a great group of seniors and they’re going to use this. They will not let this be a wasted failure. They will use it to get better. I’m not concerned about bouncing back. Last year we started 0-2 and gave up 60 plus points in both games. We came back and had a solid season. No arguing or anything. We never blinked but we couldn’t get out of our own way.”
Senior quarterback Knox Cooper said, “We just got to bounce back. We didn’t execute. There’s always next week though. We just need to practice harder and execute better to get ready for the next one.”
East Central will look to do just that as they load up the buses Friday evening and head to Fayetteville, Tennessee to take on Riverside Christian Academy, who lost 28-8 to Zion Christian Academy on August 11.
