Golden Eagle football wraps up 2012 with 31-13 road win at Frankin Heights

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

COLUMBUS — In what coach Joe Weaver called an all-around solid team effort, Big Wal­nut closed out its 2012 sea­son with a 31–13 Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion vic­tory over Franklin Heights on a wet and windy Fri­day night.

“Our seniors turned in a win­ning per­for­mance in clos­ing out their careers … and give our return­ing play­ers a pos­i­tive step into next sea­son,” Weaver said after watch­ing his Golden Eagles close out 6–4 over­all and 4–3 in the OCC Cap­i­tal. “We had con­tri­bu­tions from our phase of our game from our offense, to our spe­cial team play as well as from our defense.”

Franklin Heights (2–8, 0–7 OCC) drew first blood on sopho­more Mitch Kittinger’s 3-yard touch­down run with 5:21 left in the first quar­ter. The Golden Fal­cons’ score was set up by junior line­backer Evan Jones’ inter­cep­tion of a Car­son Chat­ter­ton pass which Jones returned 60 yards to the Big Wal­nut 14-yard line.

Big Wal­nut was quick to respond, tak­ing the Golden Fal­con kick­off and dri­ving 80 yards in 9 plays with senior run­ning back Alex Clark going in for six from 34 yards out to tie the game at 7-all with 2:06 left in the open­ing period.

The Golden Eagles, out­gain­ing Franklin Heights 239 to 53 in the first half, would dom­i­nate the remain­der of the open­ing half as Chat­ter­ton got pay­back for the inter­cep­tion with a tackle-breaking 49-yard touch­down run to break the 7–7 dead­lock with 4:34 left in sec­ond quar­ter. Senior defen­sive back Seth Myers fol­lowed with an 85-yard return of a Ray Span­gler punt for a touch­down and a 21–7 half­time lead. Myers ended the half by pick­ing off a Span­gler pass to thwart Franklin Heights drive at the Big Wal­nut 34.

The Golden Fal­cons gave their fans hope to open the sec­ond half as Kit­tinger took the kick­off and returned it 90 yards for a touch­down to pull within eight of the lead at 21–13 14 sec­onds into the half, but Big Wal­nut answered as Chat­ter­ton tossed a 29-yard scor­ing strike to senior wide receiver Adam Sha­heen 32 sec­onds later as the Golden Eagles extended their lead to 28–13 with 11:14 left in the third period.

On Franklin Heights’ next pos­ses­sion, Big Walnut’s defense set up the game’s final score as senior line­backer Parker Marsch recov­ered a Span­gle fum­ble at the Golden Fal­con 30 yard line with 9:58 remain­ing in the third period, five plays later sopho­more kicker Tyler Sat­ter­field booted a 25-yard field goal for a 31–13 lead with 7:58 left in the third period.

With the rain increas­ing in inten­sity and the tem­per­a­ture falling and both teams sub­sti­tut­ing freely, the remain­ing 19:58 was played with­out a score by either side.

For the game, Big Wal­nut totaled 272 yards and 11 first downs in 51 plays. Franklin Heights fin­ished with 91 yards and 8 first down in 46 plays. The Golden Eagles rushed for 234 yards in 40 attempts while com­plet­ing 4 of 11 passes for 38 yards. The Golden Fal­cons picked up 88 yards in 42 car­ries while net­ting only 3 yards on 4 of 7 pass com­ple­tions. The Eagles drew 6 penal­ties for 55 yards com­pared to to 4 for 60 yards for the Fal­cons. Franklin Heights had pos­ses­sion of the ball for 24 min­utes and 38 sec­onds com­pared to Big Walnut’s 23:22.

Posted by Gary Henery on Oct 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.