Warriors oblige Saints’ decision to play in 49-0 rout

DUDLEY — For a bunch of teenagers who were told — at least for a while Thursday — that they would be free on Friday night, Hunt High varsity football players sure didn’t seem to mind instead playing at Southern Wayne.

The Warriors rolled to their biggest win of the season 49-0 over a Saints team that wasn’t sure it would have enough healthy bodies to even play Friday night. Hunt head coach Juan Jackson said that his Southern Wayne counterpart, Matt Hine, contacted him mid-week to say that the Saints were going to have to forfeit the game because injuries and other factors had whittled down the number of available players.

But, after second thought, the Saints called back Thursday to say the game was still on. The result was the same, Hunt wins, except a lot more convincingly than a forfeit as the Warriors evened their overall record a 3-3 and climbed to 2-1 in the 3-A Quad County Conference. The Saints slumped onward at 1-5 overall and 0-3 in QCC games.

“We did what we expected to do,” Jackson said. “We ran the ball well. Offensive line played very well. Defensively, we shut them out and so, of course, they played well, but we achieved all of our team goals, even though we had to overcome a lot of adversity this week. To tell the guys that we weren’t playing yesterday, go back and tell them that we are playing, we were concerned about how motivated they were going to be. You know, being that they were told they’re not going to play then they are going to play.”

While statistics for the game were incomplete afterward, sophomore running back J.T. Thomas scored a touchdown in each half and junior quarterback Carson Jones ran for one TD and passed for two more scores.

Thomas put Hunt on the scoreboard early when he completed the Warriors’ opening drive with a short TD run. Junior Will Doll kicked the first of his seven successful PAT attempts to go with three touchbacks on his booming kickoffs.

Jones rolled into the end zone for a 14-0 first-quarter lead for Hunt.

Isaiah Chadwick scored a special teams TD for the Warriors when he darted 55 yards with a Saints punt to put Hunt ahead 21-0 still in the first quarter.

Jones connected with senior wide receiver A.J. Hampton for a deep aerial TD and senior Brandon Batts bolted more than 30 yards for Hunt’s fifth TD of the opening period.

Jayden Warren, a sophomore, found the end zone from a little more than 10 yards in the third quarter that triggered the running clock before senior Tykwon Matthews galloped more than 30 yards to paydirt.

Jackson spread the ball around in the rout.

“We actually got to rest a couple of guys,” he said. “Take them out of ballgame early. That’s going to help us in the long run.”

For Hunt first-year offensive coordinator Cam Avery, Friday’s game showed him some things he hadn’t seen yet from his outfit.

“I thought we executed better than we did last week (a 42-13 home win over winless Smithfield-Selma),” he said. “I thought we got a little bit cleaner. There’s still some things we need to clean up, but I think we’re starting to kind of hit our stride a little bit, figure some things out. We’re starting to see it a little bit better, so hopefully, down this backstretch, we continue to progress and get better and see it and keep progressing and developing different players in different roles, so thatwe’re able to win in different ways on different nights.”

Hunt has that one loss to front-running C.B. Aycock but with four more QCC games to play, the Warriors are far from out of the running to win at least a share of a third Quad County crown in four seasons.

“All our goals are still attainable,” Jackson said. “We control our own destiny, all we have to do is take care of our business.”

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