Braves run away from Golden Eagles, 40-24

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

The fourth quar­ter belonged to the Braves.

Olen­tangy ral­lied from an early fourth-quarter 24–21 deficit to score 20 points in the final 10:59 to hand Big Wal­nut a 40–24 defeat in the Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion opener for both teams Fri­day night at Golden Eagle Sta­dium in Sunbury.

Olen­tangy (4–0, 1–0 OCC), look­ing to avenge last season’s 41–13 road loss to the Golden Eagles, dom­i­nated the final period on both sides of the ball. After Alex Clark booted a 21-yard field goal to give Big Wal­nut (2–2, 0–1 OCC) a 24–20 advan­tage 61 sec­onds into the fourth quar­ter, the Braves went to work.

The Braves answered with an 8-play, 65-yard drive capped by junior back Hay­den Hunter’s 5-yard run to give the Braves a 27–24 lead with 7:40 to play.

The Olen­tangy defense took over from there, end­ing the Golden Eagles last three pos­ses­sions with inter­cep­tions, the first two set­ting up touch­downs to seal the vic­tory for the Braves, while lim­it­ing Big Wal­nut to 26 yards in 7 plays.

The first theft saw Olen­tangy senior defen­sive back Ramal Iver­son step in front of a Car­son Chat­ter­ton pass at the Big Wal­nut 42 and return it to the Golden Eagle 31. Four plays later, senior run­ning­back Luke Hart­line scored from 2 yards out to make it 34–24 with 4:31 to play.

On the Golden Eagles’ next series, sopho­more line­backer Anthony Golden fol­lowed Iverson’s lead by pick­ing off a Chat­ter­ton pass at the Golden Eagle 32 and return­ing it to the BW 8-yard line. Fol­low­ing a 1-yard loss Horstman rolled out to his right and scored on a 9-yard run with 2:32 remain­ing for the 40–24 final score.

The Olen­tangy defense put an excla­ma­tion point on the vic­tory as junior line­backer Tim Feasel recorded the third inter­cep­tion of the period to seal the come­back victory.

“Our play­ers never quit … they con­tin­ued to play hard and make the plays we needed to make to be suc­cess­ful tonight,” vet­eran Olen­tangy head coach Ed Ter­williger said. “Big Wal­nut has a good foot­ball team, and they are tough to beat at home … I was really proud with the way our guys responded after falling behind going into the fourth quarter.”

With the vic­tory, Olen­tangy evened the all-time series record between the two Delaware County rivals at 24–24. With the win, the Braves have won six of the last nine meet­ings. Last night’s vic­tory was the first for Olen­tangy since the 2009 sea­son when the Braves shut out the Golden Eagles 17–0. Big Wal­nut had won the two games prior to this sea­son, win­ning 13–10 in 2010 and 41–13 last season.

“We just ran out of gas in the fourth quar­ter,” Big Wal­nut head coach Joe Weaver said. “Olen­tangy comes out and plays hard and phys­i­cally wears oppo­nents down … they are a very ath­letic foot­ball team. For the first three quar­ters we matched up well with them and did a good job exe­cut­ing our game plan, but we were unable to answer in the final 11 minutes.”

The open­ing quar­ter was an offen­sive shootout as each team scored two touch­downs to go into the sec­ond period dead­locked at 14–14. Olen­tangy opened the scor­ing as Horstman tossed a 45-yard scor­ing pass to senior wide receiver Chris­t­ian Brett. Big Wal­nut answered as Chat­ter­ton found senior wide receiver Seth Myers on a 15-yard scor­ing strike to tie the game at 7–7. It didn’t take the Braves long to answer as Brett took the ensu­ing kick­off and returned it 77 yards for a touch­down and a 14–7 Olen­tangy lead. On the final play of the open­ing period, Chat­ter­ton and senior wide receiver Adam Sha­heen com­bined on a 25-yard TD pass to send the game into the sec­ond quar­ter dead­locked at 14–14.

Olen­tangy turn to its kick­ing game to take a 20–14 lead behind the field goal efforts of junior kicker Josh Baum­bach who booted a 29-yard field goal with 0:50.5 sec­onds remain­ing in the open­ing half and 28-yarder with 7:14 left in the third quar­ter before Big Wal­nut re-awakened its attack to take its 24–20 lead.

Fol­low­ing Baumbach’s sec­ond three-pointer, the Golden Eagles mounted a 10-play 65-yard touch­down drive high­lighted by Myers’ div­ing catch of a Chat­ter­ton pass at the Olen­tangy 11 on a third-and-5 call from the Braves’ 15-yard line. Four plays later Chat­ter­ton pow­ered his way into the end zone on a fourth-and-goal call from the one to give Big Wal­nut a 21–20 lead with 2:34 left in the third quarter.

Big Wal­nut got the ball right back before the quar­ter ended as Myers pounced on a Brett fum­ble at the Olen­tangy 40. Fol­low­ing Chatterton’s 31-yard strike to Myers at the Braves’ 10, Clark booted his 21-yard field goal to give the Golden Eagles what would be their final lead.

Horstman led the Olen­tangy attack with 195 yards in total offense, com­plet­ing 11 of 17 passes for 160 yards and 2 touch­downs while rush­ing for 35 yards in 10 car­ries. Brett added 97 yards on the ground while junior Maleke Mitchell con­tributed 65 in 6 carries.

For Big Wal­nut, Chat­ter­ton led the way as the senior quar­ter­back con­nected on 20 of 32 passes for 264 yards and 2 touch­downs. Chat­ter­ton also rushed for a touch­down. Myers caught 9 passes for 109 yards while senior wide receiver Gabe Kitchen had 5 recep­tions for 59 yards and Sha­heen 2 for 47 yards.

Posted by Gary Henery on Sep 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.