Scots top Pirates in lightning-shortened contest

By ROB HAMILTON

While light­ning strikes caused Highland’s Home­com­ing game against Card­ing­ton to be ruled con­cluded with 11 min­utes left in the fourth quar­ter, the home team’s fans still had plenty to celebrate.

The Scots racked up over 400 yards to go with five rush­ing touch­downs, as well as a goal-line stand, in win­ning 34–0 to improve to 3–2 on the sea­son, 3–1 in con­fer­ence play.

The goal-line stand might have been the moment in the game that made Scot coach Chad Car­pen­ter most proud. Card­ing­ton had opened the half with a 79-yard drive that went from their 20 to the High­land one-yard line.

Chase Deck­ling had runs of 16 and 15 yards, while Colton Jenk­ins added a 16-yard gain that had a 15-yard late hit tacked on, as the Pirates moved down the field.

How­ever, after an eight-yard run by Deck­ling moved the ball to the Scot one-yard line on a first down play, the Pirates were unable to move it into the end zone, los­ing two yards over the next three plays to give the ball back to Highland.

“We had a great goal-line stand,” said Car­pen­ter. “That was out­stand­ing, but I think we got a lit­tle com­pla­cent at halftime.”

Car­pen­ter was also pleased with the job his offense did after that stand. Hold­ing a 27–0 lead going into half­time, they were able to eat the final 5:37 of the third quar­ter and the first minute of the fourth on a 14-play touch­down drive.

David Fisher ran the ball nine times for 72 yards on the drive, includ­ing a two-yard touch­down run to cap it. After Quen­ton Miller added the extra point kick, the game was post­poned and then ended due to the weather.

“I’m really happy with how we han­dled the ball in that sit­u­a­tion,” said the coach. “We moved the ball the length of the field and ate a lot of time.”

Ear­lier in the game, it took the Scots a lit­tle while to get going, but when they did, they scored on four con­sec­u­tive dri­ves to take a com­mand­ing lead into the locker room.

Get­ting the ball at the 4:29 mark of the first quar­ter on their own 49-yard line, it only took three plays to get in the end zone.

Quar­ter­back Josh Gahm hit Shawn Beltz for a 41-yard gain to put them in strik­ing dis­tance and Beltz then added a six-yard scor­ing run to put his team on the board.

After a Pirate punt, the Scots struck again, scor­ing on an eight-yard run by Fisher early in the sec­ond quar­ter and tak­ing a 14–0 lead.

Card­ing­ton, who strug­gled to move the ball in the first half, would then have to punt again. This time, High­land took the ball on the Pirate 49.

After a penalty moved them back five yards, Gahm hit Beltz again and the senior receiver wound up turn­ing an inside screen into a 51-yard gain. On the next play, Beltz scored on a two-yard run to make the score 21–0.

On Highland’s next pos­ses­sion, Fisher did most of the work, with the drive end­ing with him scor­ing from seven yards out. While the extra point kick was missed, the Scots did still have a 27–0 lead, which they took into the locker room.

For the game, Fisher fin­ished with 190 yards and three scores, while Beltz had 96 and two scores. Gahm threw for 101 yards on three com­ple­tions, with Beltz catch­ing two of those passes for the bulk of the yardage.

Car­pen­ter noted that he wanted to use a lot of weapons in the game on offense.

“We tried to move it around a lit­tle bit and had some mis­matches we liked,” he said. “I thought the kids stayed focused the entire night.”

For Card­ing­ton, Deck­ling fin­ished with a team-high 48 rush­ing yards. Noah Zier­den com­pleted two passes for 15 yards — both to Dustin Blanton.

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