Fast start propels Big Walnut gridders to 27-14 OCC road victory at Watkins Memorial

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

PATASKALA — When all was said and done … the first half was the dif­fer­ence for the Golden Eagles.

Big Wal­nut (4–2, 2–1 OCC) rode three first-half touch­downs along with a dom­i­nat­ing defense to a 27–14 Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion vic­tory over the host War­riors (1–5, 1–2 OCC) Fri­day night at Watkins Memo­r­ial High School.

Joe Weaver‘s Golden Eagles (4–2, 2–1 OCC) rolled up 251 yards and 11 first downs in 29 plays en route to a 20–0 half­time advan­tage. Senior quar­ter­back Car­son Chat­ter­ton, who com­pleted 11 of 15 passes for 206 yards over the first two quar­ters, threw touch­down strikes to senior wide receiver Gabe Kitchen, sopho­more run­ning back Chris­t­ian John­son and to senior wide receiver Adam Shaheen.

After hold­ing the War­riors on downs at the Golden Eagle 20 on the game’s first series, Big Wal­nut took over at its own 30 and found the end zone in four plays as Chat­ter­ton found Kitchen on a 59-yard touch­down pass for an early 7–0 lead with 5:02 left in the open­ing period.

The Golden Eagles struck for two scores in the final 6-plus min­utes of the first half, Chat­ter­ton and John­son com­bin­ing on a 44-yard scor­ing con­nec­tion to make it 14–0 with 6:12 left before find­ing Sha­heen on a 12-yard scor­ing pass with 0:28.2 sec­onds remain­ing before the break.

Mean­while, Big Walnut’s defense was throt­tling the War­riors, lim­it­ing Watkins Memo­r­ial (1–5, 1–2 OCC) to 76 yards and four first downs in 26 plays with three of its four pos­ses­sions end­ing on punts.

“We came out and played a solid first half both offen­sively and defen­sively,” Weaver said. “We were totally focused com­ing out of the lock­er­room and exe­cut­ing our game plan against a com­pet­i­tive Watkins Memo­r­ial team.”

The sec­ond half was a dif­fer­ent story for the Golden Eagles.

Big Walnut’s offense, plagued by mis­takes, snapped the ball only 14 times in the sec­ond half while man­ag­ing only 18 yards and one first down against the Warriors.

“We made too many offen­sive mis­takes in the sec­ond half, mis­takes we are going to have to address before we play Mount Ver­non next week,” Weaver said. “As a result, we weren’t as sharp in the sec­ond half as we were in the first half, giv­ing Watkins oppor­tu­ni­ties to put points on the board.”

After a score­less third quar­ter, junior Hunter Holton inter­cepted a Chat­ter­ton pass and returned it to the War­rior 47. Nine plays later, Watkins’ junior quar­ter­back Ben Shroyer tossed an 11-yard touch­down pass to Holton with 7:22 left in the game.

Fol­low­ing the ensu­ing kick­off, Watkins Memo­r­ial got the ball right back as senior Boban Stepanovich recov­ered Chatterton’s fum­ble at the Golden Eagle 34, but on the War­riors’ first play, Sha­heen stepped in front of a Shroyer pass at the Big Wal­nut 16 and returned it 84 yards for a touch­down to put the game out of reach 27–7 with 7:01 to play.

“Our defense did a great job all night,” Weaver said. “They made big plays all night.”

Watkins Memo­r­ial closed out the scor­ing with a 16-play, 70-yard drive that ended on senior Bren­den Kemp’s 1-yard run with 2:33 left in the contest.

For the game, Big Wal­nut, led by Chatterton’s 206-yard pass per­for­mance, totaled 253 yards and 12 first downs in 43 plays. Kitchen (92 yards), Seth Myers (40) and Sha­heen (22) had three recep­tions apiece. Led by Johnson’s 51 yards in 13 car­ries, the Golden Eagles net­ted only 47 yards in 24 plays.

Watkins Memo­r­ial totaled 256 yards and 17 first downs in 73 snaps. Shroyer was 18-for-34 pass­ing for 152 yards. Holton had 8 catches for 97 yards. The War­riors rushed for 104 yards in 39 plays with Kemp col­lect­ing 102 yards in 29 attempts.

Big Wal­nut returns home Fri­day night to host OCC rival Mount Ver­non in the Golden Eagles annual Home­com­ing Game. The kick­off is set for 7:30 p.m. at Golden Eagle Stadium.

Posted by Gary Henery on Oct 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.