Owen Sloan has stellar night, Hillsdale separate themselves from Loudonvile in win

LOUDONVILLE - Owen Sloan solidified the Hillsdale football team's ground game as the Falcons swept past Loudonville 42-7 Friday night at Redbird Stadium in an independent contest.

Hillsdale is now at 3-0 on the season and Loudonville remains winless at 0-3.

Sloan, a junior, rushed for 132 yards on 10 carries and a trio of touchdowns, with a one-yard bolt and a 75-yard run to glory in the second quarter that boosted Hillsdale's lead to 14-0.

More: Ashland County Football Week 2 Power Rankings: Ashland teams struggle this week, go 3-6

"We challenged our guys this week to be able to run the football, and I felt they answered that challenge," Hillsdale coach Trevor Cline offered. "Owen's done a great job. He had a great off-season working on his speed and you can see that happen on the field this year.

"When he gets out, he's pretty hard to tackle, and if he breaks one or two tackles. he's usually gone."

Loudomviile had a couple of drives early in the game where they were moving the ball behind quarterback Dillan Wade, only to see the Falcon defense rise to the occasion and stop any would-be scoring threat by the Redbirds.

"We had a couple of drives and we shot ourselves in the foot a couple of times, we just need to finish drives, that's been our problem this season, not finishing things," noted first-year Redbird coach Ed Honabarger. "It's a young team with a lot of first-year starters, we only have five seniors, and unfortunately, we play like that.

"We've just got to learn to finish stuff, once we can learn that and work on the little things and how important little things are and to do right, once the kids get that we'll be better."

Hillsdale saw quarterback Kael Lewis hook up with Holland Young for a 75-yard TD reception at the 2:08 mark of the second quarter. Hillsdale got the ball back and scored again with 8 seconds to play as Young hauled in a 9-year pass from Lewis.

The Falcons added a pair of TDs in the third period as Sloan scored on a 9-yard run before Brock Bower added a 10-year TD run to give Hillsdale a 42-0 cushion.

After each Falcon score, A.J. Brown made good on all six extra-point kicks,

Loudonville finally got on the scoreboard with 5:25 to play in the fourth quarter when Wade found Josiah Hershberger in the left corner of the end zone for an 8-yard TD pass, with Christian Gutierrez adding the PAT.

Wade went 14 of 22 passing for 136 yards and a pair of interceptions, adding 59 yards rushing on 13 carries. Hershberger was his main target, latching onto seven passes for 63 yards,.

"We need a solid year in the weight room, we're not strong enough and that shows in our blocking and tackling at times, we get pushed around a little bit more than what we want," Honabarger said. "It's growing pains and unfortunately, they truly are pains."

Lewis went 8 of 14 through the air for 177 yards with Young nabbing a pair of passes for 86 stripes.

Loudonville did recover three Hillsdale fumbles on the night.

But all in all, it was a complete performance on both sides of the ball for the Falcons.

"We felt our guys did a nice job because we've been down here the last couple of times in Loudonville and we didn't have much success," Cline said. "We felt offensively and defensively, our players played well. We still had too many turnovers offensively but overall we played really well."

This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Owen Sloan has stellar night, Hillsdale separate themselves from Loudonvile in win