BW finishes strong in 35-13 win over Hayes

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

DELAWARE — It was well worth the wait … for the Golden Eagles.

Big Wal­nut, cling­ing to a 21–13 half­time lead, came back from Fri­day night’s light­ning sus­pen­sion to shut out Delaware Hayes in the sec­ond half en route to a 35–13 Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion vic­tory over the home-standing Pac­ers Sat­ur­day night at Gau­thier Field.

In the clos­ing sec­onds of the first half, light­ning put a damper on the annual Golden Eagle-Pacer rivalry. With light­ning from an approach­ing storm illu­mi­nat­ing the skies, forc­ing the offi­cials to sus­pend play until Sat­ur­day night.

When play resumed Sat­ur­day night, Big Wal­nut (2–2, 0–1 OCC) and Hayes (1–4, 0–2 OCC) each exchanged two pos­ses­sions before Joe Weaver’s Golden Eagles took con­trol of the game. Fol­low­ing a Pacer punt, Big Wal­nut mounted a 12-play, 72-yard drive that ended with Car­son Chatterton’s 1-yard quar­ter­back sneak three sec­onds into the fourth quar­ter to give the vis­i­tors a 28–13 lead.

The Golden Eagle defense held Hayes on downs at the BW 48 on the fol­low­ing pos­ses­sion. Six plays later, sopho­more run­ning back Chris­t­ian John­son, who had a 52-yard TD run called back by a hold­ing penalty on the first play of the series, scored on a 14-yard run with 7:14 remain­ing in the con­test Fol­low­ing Tyler Satterfield’s fifth suc­cess­ful point-after try, Big Wal­nut led 35–21.

“We came back out ready to play after the longest half in his­tory. Our kids were focused and pretty much dom­i­nated the game on Sat­ur­day night,” Weaver said. “Chris­t­ian was our go-to player in the sec­ond half. He’s a tough-nosed kid who goes and plays hard on each and every play.”

Big Walnut’s 5-foot-6, 150-pound run­ning back rushed for 167 yards and a touch­down on 16 car­ries in the sec­ond half after scor­ing on a 64-yard run on Big Walnut’s first play of the game, John­son totaled with 241 yards in 23 attempts for an aver­age of 10.5 yards per carry. Senior Alex Clark con­tributed 58 yards in 11 car­ries. Chat­ter­ton was 5-for-10 pass­ing, with an inter­cep­tion, for 61 yards. Gabe Kitchen, with 2 catches for 26 yards and John­son, with 2 recep­tions for 20 yards, were Chatterton’s lead­ing receivers.

As a team, Big Wal­nut accu­mu­lated 434 yards in total offense with 16 first downs in 55 plays, 373 of the yards com­ing on the ground in 45 rush­ing attempts.

Weaver also praised the play of the Golden Eagle defense after a shaky start Fri­day night.

“Our defense came back out Sat­ur­day night and pretty much con­trolled Hayes in the sec­ond half, espe­cially up front,” Weaver said. “I was really pleased with their effort against Delaware’s offense, an offense that has great potential.”

Big Walnut’s defense kept the Pac­ers off the score­board in the sec­ond half, allow­ing only 58 yards and 6 first downs (2 by penalty) in 24 plays, after sur­ren­der­ing 168 yards and 2 touch­downs in 39 plays on Fri­day night. Junior back Thoeun Sorn led the Pac­ers with 85 yards in 15 car­ries. Alex Rafeld was 8-for-21 pass­ing for 75 yards with 3 inter­cep­tions. Tay­lor Adair, who rushed for 33 yards in 9 car­ries, had 3 catches for 41 yards while Jante’ Wright hauled in 3 passes for 21 yards.

“Big Wal­nut is a very good foot­ball team, a team that plays fun­da­men­tally sound and lim­its its mis­takes … that is why they are good year in and year out,” Pacer coach Zebb Schroeder said. “We’re a very young team that is going through some grow­ing pains and, because of our youth, we make too many mis­takes in key situations.”

Mis­takes hurt Hayes in the open­ing half Fri­day night, two mis­takes that denied the Pac­ers two prob­a­ble scores while help­ing Big Wal­nut to a 21–13 lead at the break.

After Johnson’s 64-yard touch­down run gave the Golden Eagles an early 7–0 lead, the Pac­ers drove to the BW 1-yard line in 9 plays, but came up empty-handed. On a third-and-goal, Sorn pow­ered into the end zone, but the play was nul­li­fied by an offen­sive hold­ing penalty. On the ensu­ing play, Rafeld fum­bled and the ball was recov­ered by Big Walnut’s Brant Weiss on the Golden Eagle 24-yard line,

After the two teams exchanged touch­down passes, Rafeld toss­ing a 17-yard scor­ing strike to Adair with 3:34 left in the open­ing period to cut the BW lead to 7–6 and Chat­ter­ton find­ing Gabe Kitchen on 13-yard pass with 11:16 remain­ing in the half.

The Golden Eagles forced another Pacer turnover as Seth Myers stepped in front of a pass intended for Caleb How­ell at the Big Wal­nut 1-yard line, return­ing it to the BW 33 to end the threat.

Three plays and 67 yards later, the Golden Eagles were back in the end zone as Alec Eisnnicher broke free on on 56-yard scor­ing run for a 21–6 lead with 4:26 left in the half.

Hayes took advan­tage of a Golden Eagle turnover late in the half to score with 1:58 left. After recov­er­ing the ball on the BW 9-yard line after Myers made con­tact with a Pacer punt, Rafeld found Wright on a 5-yard scor­ing pass from 5 yards out to send the two teams into Sat­ur­day with Big Wal­nut lead­ing 21–13.

Posted by Gary Henery on Sep 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.