Big plays pave way for Cardington’s 32-6 win over MG

By ROB HAMILTON

While the Card­ing­ton foot­ball team strug­gled in the early parts of the year, things are improv­ing for the Pirates as the sea­son gets closer to its conclusion.

On Fri­day, Card­ing­ton gained its sec­ond straight win as they topped archri­val Mount Gilead by a 32–6 mar­gin dur­ing cold and rainy con­di­tions. After an 0–7 start, the Pirates are now 2–7 head­ing into this week’s season-ending con­test at win­less Ridgedale.

“The kids played with a lot of heart,” said head coach Bran­don Dodrill. “They’ve got­ten bet­ter all year long. We got pounded pretty good, but are on a path to fin­ish strong.”

Big plays are what led the Pirates to the win, as four of their five touch­downs were on plays of at least 65 yards. The first of those touch­downs hap­pened in the first quar­ter after a false start penalty on fourth-and-short from the Pirate 45 moved Mount Gilead back five yards and forced them to punt.

Card­ing­ton took over on their 24. Two runs by Chase Deck­ling moved the ball to the 35 and Colton Jenk­ins took it the rest of the way, going 65 yards on a run to get his team on the score­board at 6–0.

The Pirates then tried an onside kick, but Mount Gilead recov­ered the ball on the Card­ing­ton 38. Unfor­tu­nately for the Indi­ans, another untimely false start turned fourth-and-manageable to a much longer play and they wound up turn­ing the ball over on downs.

Indian coach Steve Ringer noted that his team made too many mis­takes in key situations.

“We killed our­selves on a cou­ple of dri­ves early with false starts,” he said. “And we defen­sively missed a bunch of tackles.”

They did recover a fum­ble on Cardington’s next drive. The Pirates moved as close as the Inidan 30, but the turnover ended that scor­ing threat.

Three runs by Bashaw and a pair of passes from Pay­ton Van­derkooi to Michael Bland got the ball to the Pirate 26. On fourth down, the Indi­ans got a break when Card­ing­ton jumped off­side, but the oppor­tu­nity was squan­dered when they turned the ball over on downs on the Pirate seven.

It looked like the Mount Gilead defense would be able to bail the team out when they forced a four-yard loss on their opponent’s first run from scrim­mage. How­ever, Chase Deck­ling got the ball on the sec­ond play and sprinted 97 yards for the touch­down. Quar­ter­back Dustin Blan­ton then ran in the two-point con­ver­sion to make the score 14–0 with 5:24 to go in the half.

The Indi­ans would get back in the game on their next drive, as Bashaw returned the kick­off to mid­field. After three runs got things to the Pirate 35, the team got a 30-yard pass play to put them in scor­ing range. ON the next play, Bland took the hand­off in for six, which brought the vis­i­tors within eight points.

How­ever, Card­ing­ton would dom­i­nate the final 2:50 of the half to take a 20-point lead into halftime.

After the ensu­ing Indian kick­off went into the end zone for a touch­back, Dodrill went back to Deck­ling — with the same result. The senior back took the hand­off 80 yards for a touch­down that gave his team a 20–6 lead.

Mount Gilead then fum­bled the kick­off and four more car­ries by Deck­ling put the ball back in the end zone for Card­ing­ton. His 13-yard scor­ing run made things 26–6 at the half.

While Cardington’s offense didn’t get any more points in the sec­ond half, their defense did more than enough to keep them on top.

Mount Gilead’s first drive of the third quar­ter was their best of the half, as they went from their 35 to the Pirate 18 before an errant pass was picked off by Tyler Dor­nan and returned all the way for the game’s final touchdown.

Both teams had scor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in the fourth quar­ter, but wound up turn­ing the ball over on downs inside their oppo­nents’ 25.

Ringer noted that his team’s mis­takes put them in long-yardage pass­ing sit­u­a­tions dur­ing a night where the weather wasn’t good for that sort of gameplan.

“They (the mis­takes) put you in third and long and the weather tonight makes it hard on the pass game,” said the coach. “My hat’s off to them (Card­ing­ton) — they played a hard, tough game.”

Dodrill, who watched Deck­ling rush for 247 yards in the win, was pleased with how his team was able to exe­cute. He noted that his play­ers have improved as the sea­son has pro­gressed, with the last two weeks being proof of that.

“We had a lot of guys who had to learn a lot of new posi­tions this year,” he said. “The guys have got­ten bet­ter all year and that’s all I ask them to do.”

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Oct 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.