Ground game propels Northmor past Ridgedale

By ROB HAMILTON

A potent rush­ing attack, a timely fourth-quarter defen­sive stand and a big play on spe­cial teams paved the way for Northmor’s first Mid-Ohio Ath­letic Con­fer­ence win in some time on Friday.

The Knights, who beat Ridgedale 26–14 in the road con­test, had not won a league game since Oct. 13, 2009 (19–0 over Elgin).

Tyler Beck led the team with 186 yards and three touch­downs on the ground, while Jamie Baldridge added a score on 128 rush­ing yards.

Coach B.J. Trainer noted that Ridgedale did a good job tak­ing away their out­side rush­ing game, but weren’t able to con­tain them inside.

“I think they tried to take away our out­side game, but that opened things up off-tackle,” he said. “Our line played really good and opened holes. We didn’t play excep­tion­ally well in the first half, but came out in the sec­ond deter­mined to shut the door.”

The first half was con­trolled by the teams’ offenses, as both squads were able to hold the ball for long peri­ods of time as they drove down the field.

After the Knights opened the game with a drive capped by a two-yard touch­down run by Beck that gave them a 6–0 lead, Ridgedale was forced to punt.

North­mor got the ball on their 20 and moved to the Rocket 25 before a Ridgedale sack caused them to turn the ball over on downs.

This time, the Rock­ets held the ball for eight min­utes in going 62 yards in 14 plays — cul­mi­nat­ing in a five-yard scor­ing run by Daniel Payne. A suc­cess­ful point-after kick gave the Rock­ets a 7–6 lead.

North­mor would quickly regain the advan­tage, though, get­ting 40 yards on the ground from Beck and 16 more from Baldridge in dri­ving down the field for what would be a nine-yard scor­ing run by Beck that gave the Knights a 12–7 lead.

Unfor­tu­nately for the locals, Ridgedale was able to answer, get­ting a 20-yard scor­ing pass on the final play of the half to take a two-point advan­tage into the locker room. How­ever, the Knight defense didn’t allow any points in the sec­ond half.

“The kids stepped up real well,” said Trainer. “We made a cou­ple adjust­ments at half­time — not any­thing huge, but the kids did a nice job executing.”

After forc­ing a punt on Ridgedale’s first pos­ses­sion, the Knights took the ball on their own nine-yard line.

It wouldn’t take long for them to improve that field posi­tion, though. Runs by Beck and Gar­rett Rowan moved the ball to the 25 and then, in quick suc­ces­sion, Beck ran for 11, Baldridge took a carry for 14 and Beck got the ball again for 21 yards to move the ball into Rocket ter­ri­tory at the 29.

Three plays later, Baldridge took the ball, leapt a defender and dashed 17 yards for a score to give the Knights an 18–14 lead.

It wouldn’t take long for them to add to that mar­gin. The North­mor kick­off was a squib on the ground that wasn’t han­dled by the Rock­ets, allow­ing a Knight player to leap on the ball and give them pos­ses­sion on the Ridgedale 41.

“We noticed a cou­ple of their young men leav­ing early on the open­ing kick­off,” said Trainer in explain­ing his strat­egy. “Their kid had a chance at it, but it just bounced up and hit him wrong.”

From there, it took North­mor five plays to reach the end zone. A nine-yard run by Beck fol­lowed by a con­ver­sion pass from Zach Car­roll to Baldridge gave North­mor eight points to put them on top by a 12-point margin.

Northmor’s defense han­dled the rest of the work for the team. Ridgedale moved the ball from their 25 into North­mor ter­ri­tory on their next pos­ses­sion, which stretched into the fourth quar­ter, but was stopped short of the goal line.

With the ball on the Knight seven, a hold­ing call on Ridgedale moved them back to the 15 on third down and then an incom­plete pass and a sack of the Rocket quar­ter­back gave the ball back to the Knights with 10 min­utes to play.

From there, Ridgedale only got two more pos­ses­sions and didn’t make it to mid­field on either of them, as North­mor closed out their sec­ond win of the season.

One of the things that has most impressed Trainer about his team is their resilience, as they came ready to play Ridgedale after a bru­tal start to their MOAC sched­ule that included games with tough Red Divi­sion foes North Union, High­land, Buck­eye Val­ley and River Valley.

“The mind­set is totally dif­fer­ent,” he said. “The kids have worked so hard. We’ll be play­ing good teams in the sec­ond half, but I think we have games where we can match up bet­ter than the North Unions, River Val­leys and High­lands, who are so fast and physical.”

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