High school football: Chargers triumph in low-scoring battle

LITTLEFIELD – As simple as it sounds on the surface, what pleased Ayden-Grifton football Paul Cornwell most Friday night was that his Chargers just kept playing.

It paid off for Ayden-Grifton in a grinding, hard-fought 10-8 win over Greene Central in an Eastern Plains 2A Conference matchup.

“The kids just kept playing,” Cornwell said. “That’s the key. They just kept playing. Bad things happen, you just keep playing.”

Ayden-Grifton scored the only two times it possessed the ball in the first half, and the Chargers’ defense forced three second-half turnovers to hang on to the slim lead.

“The whole season, our kids have played hard,” Cornwell said. “We’re learning. We’re still learning, but the effort has been there. We’ve had some nights where it didn’t go our way, and tonight we managed to make enough plays to win against a good team. I couldn’t be prouder of the effort and the whole group.”

Ayden-Grifton (2-4, 2-1 EPC) consumed most of the first quarter with an 11-play, 79-yard drive that gobbled up 7:51 on the clock. After spending most of the drive hitting the Rams for runs between the tackles, the Chargers’ EJ Ruffin went around right end for a 13-yard touchdown to cap the march. Kieran Frawley booted the extra point to put the Chargers up 7-0.

Greene Central (3-4, 0-3) answered with a 14-play, 72-yard scoring drive. Quarterback Josh Cetnar, on a fourth-and-goal from the 3, slipped two tackles and got into the end zone. Dejuan Cobb followed with a conversion run to put the Rams ahead 8-7.

The Chargers followed with an 11-play drive that stalled on the Greene Central 12 as the final seconds of the first half ticked away. Frawley kicked a 29-yard field goal on the final play before intermission to put Ayden-Grifton ahead 10-8.

“Our plan coming in was to establish the run, try to be physical,” Cornwell said. “We knew they would do the same thing. That’s the way they’ve been built. We wanted to make sure to come out and control the clock as much as we could and control the ball. I thought, in the first half, we did a really good job with that.”

The first half, which took less than 40 minutes to play in real time, consisted of only four possessions.

One key that helped Ayden-Grifton was that Greene Central’s defense jumped offside four times, twice on third down and less than five, and again on a 4]fourth-and-3, handing the Chargers three first downs in that pair of first-half drives.

But, following the game, Greene Central coach Jay Wilson was more concerned with other issues.

“You can’t really say much about the defense,” he said. “They played lights-out. They stopped them in the red zone. Offensively, we just didn’t put points on the board like we needed to. We left anywhere from two to three touchdowns for sure on the board. Plays we’ve made in the past that we didn’t make.”

The game turned into a defensive standoff in the second half.

Ayden-Grifton’s Jack Ewell, a Wofford commit, recovered a fumble late in the third quarter to put the Chargers’ offense on the Greene Central 25. Six plays later, on the first play of the fourth quarter, the Rams’ Ahzavion Strong did the same to end an Ayden-Grifton drive deep in Greene Central territory.

Midway through the fourth quarter, the Chargers’ Tucker Vaughan pounced on a Rams fumble on the Greene Central 24. But the Rams’ defense responded by throwing Ayden-Grifton for a 17-yard loss and got the ball back on downs with 2:55 to go.

Cetnar scrambled for a first down to set up a first down at the Greene Central 40 only to have the Chargers’ Loyalty Fuller sack him on second and third downs to set up fourth-and-26. On that play, Cetnar’s pass was picked off by Ruffin to finally put the game away for the Chargers.

“We’ve gotta go back to the drawing board and clean up the small things, be more intentional about the small things and what we do each day,” Wilson said. “We had a great week of practice. We did the small things in practice. They just didn’t translate out there tonight in crucial situations.”

Next Friday, Ayden-Grifton is scheduled to stay home to host North Pitt, while Greene Central is slated to travel to Beaufort County to face Washington.

“I think we’re there,” Cornwell said, discussing the long-term view of his program. “We’ve let a couple of games get away from us that we should have won, and I think we know that. I told them the only goal that’s not in front of us is being undefeated. We can still win the conference, we can still go to the playoffs, we can still do a lot of things. But the key is coming to work every day and getting it done. And the kids have responded. They’re working. I can’t ask much more from them.

“We’ve just got to keep playing.”

J.H. Rose 41, Northside Jacksonville 21

The Rampants continued to emerge from the despair of an 0-5 start to the season with their second consecutive win.

Rose (2-5, 2-1 Big Carolina Conference) perhaps gained another layer of confidence following a methodical win. The Rampants scored on their opening drive and added another TD later in the first quarter to lead 14-0 before the Monarchs got on the board to halve the lead.

Rose took off from there and led 41-14 by late in the fourth when Northside notched its third TD of the night during mop-up time.

The Rampants host D.H. Conley for their annual rivalry showdown next week.

New Bern 38, South Central 14

The Falcons suffered their second loss in as many weeks after the visiting Bears exploded out of the gate in the second half to leave South Central stunned and unable to respond.

The game was 7-7 at halftime, but New Bern (5-2, 2-1 Big Carolina Conference) blanked the Falcons (5-2, 1-2) by a 10-0 count in the third quarter and then piled on three touchdowns to South Central’s one in the fourth to put the game away.

SC actually grabbed the first lead of the game, 7-0, with under two minutes to play in the first half, but New Bern rallied to equalize in the final minute of the half.

The score was 38-7 when South Central scored again in the fourth.

Losers of two straight, South Central is idle next week before a tough trip to Havelock on Oct. 18.

Havelock 52, D.H. Conley 10

The Vikings lost their second straight and saw their BCC record evened at 1-1 in a blowout.

The Rams (5-1) led just 14-7 after the first quarter but proceeded to outscore Conley 12-3, 6-0 and 20-0 the final three quarters.

Conley (3-3, 1-1) travels to J.H. Rose next week.

Washington 27, Farmville Central 9

The Pam Pack shocked the Jaguars on Friday night, putting the high-octane Farmville offense out of commission in its first loss of the season.

Washington took a 7-0 lead in the opening quarter, then traded scores with the Jags in the second to lead 14-6 at the half. Farmville got on the board on a Cameron Sessoms one-yard scoring plunge.

The Pam Pack piled in two more TDs in the second half while holding Farmville (6-1, 2-1 EPC) to a mere field goal in that span.

The Jaguars will try to rebound at home against West Craven next week.

John Paul II 21, Halifax Academy 17

The Saints gutted out a close win to improve to 4-2 on the season.

JPII rallied from a 17-13 hole at the third-quarter turn by outscoring the host Vikings 8-0 in the fourth quarter.

Winners of two in a row, the Saints host Wayne Christian next week.