Mitchell, Firebirds win scorefest vs. East Wake

STANHOPE — After shooting itself in the proverbial foot on its first plays on special teams this season, the Southern Nash High varsity football team turned to its not-so-secret offensive weapon Friday night to lift the Firebirds to a 65-42 victory at home against East Wake.

The 3-A Quad County Conference Warriors returned the season-opening kickoff 68 yards for a touchdown and then the Firebirds fumbled the ensuing kickoff to complete the disastrous start on both ends. However, Southern Nash’s defense held and, on the first play from scrimmage, senior Tylik Mitchell raced 60 yards to the end zone for the first of his four touchdown runs.

However, the Firebirds wouldn’t take the lead for good until the second of sophomore quarterback Isaiah Battle’s two TD passes to senior Israel Whitaker. From there, Southern Nash, the defending 2-A/3-A Big East Conference champion, stayed comfortably ahead the rest of the way.

“Well, a lot of things that I think what we were concerned about needing to work on showed up tonight,” said Firebirds head coach Brian Batchelor, who was happy with his team’s response to some of those self-inflicted setbacks.

“In the first half, every time adversity hit, we responded to stay in the situation of the moment,” he said. “Their kids played really well, played hard and you’ve got to give them credit — their kids played really hard. But like I said, when adversity hit, I thought our guys did a good job of just staying the course.”

Mitchell, the 2023 Times Offensive Player of the Year after rushing for more than 1,700 yards, was the big gun for the Firebirds. He averaged 16.8 yards per carry while adding TD jaunts of 9, 8 and 52 yards. He was complemented by sophomore wingback Jaden Hartsfield, who had a 14-yard scoring run for the second TD, as Southern Nash rolled up 393 yards on 42 carries for more than 9.3 yards per carry.

“Well, yeah, he’s that guy that if you get the ball in his hands, he can definitely do something with it,” Batchelor said of Mitchell. “But what I liked about that was that another concern of mine was us up front. Yeah, he had a lot of yards, but he had a lot of young guys doing a good job blocking for him, and I was pleased to see that. And I thought our other backs did a good job blocking and when they got a chance to carry the ball, they were very productive with it.”

The other offensive standout was Battle, making his varsity debut under center. He connected with Whitaker on TD tosses of 22 and 11 yards in the first half. Battle completed 4-of-7 passes for 76 yards with one interception. His 24-yard strike to Luke Faulkner set up Hartsfield’s TD run.

“I’m expecting there to be ups and downs, but I thought he played really well tonight,” Batchelor said. “I thought he was composed and led us through some big situations and some really must-have scores. When we asked him to throw the ball, he did well. And when we were even in a two-minute situation there at the end of the first half, I thought he handled that really well for a young guy. So again, I know he’s still got a lot of learning curve to go and there’ll be some struggles, but he really answered the bell tonight.”

Batchelor was concerned about his young secondary going into Friday’s opener, which seemed to be valid after Southern Nash gave up 204 yards and three TDs through the air. There was also the issue of special teams at the outset of the game.

“We’ve got to make those corrections on the back end and shore up some coverage stuff and some adjustment stuff,” he said. “On special teams, we just as a whole group have got to get better there, as far as understanding how important that is to change the game, which, on the flip side of that, we also played really great on special teams.”

Mitchell had a 91-yard kickoff return to start the second half and the defense got into the scoring act when Deavon Richardson returned an interception 40 yards for the final score.

The Firebirds visit 2-A South Granville of the 2-A/3-A Northern Lakes Athletic Conference next Friday.

Southern Nash 65

East Wake 42

EW SN

First downs 16 20

Rushes-yards 35-99 42-393

Passing yards 204 78

Att-Comp-Int 21-15-1 7-4-1

Punts-Avg 2-30 0-0

Fumbles-Lost 0-0 4-1

Penalties-Yards 10-80 7-60

Score by quarters:

East Wake 14 7 14 7 — 42

Southern Nash 14 22 16 13 — 65

Scoring summary:

EW — No. 2 68 kick return (No. 21 kick), 11:48, 1st.

SN — Tylik Mitchell 60 run (Cooper Wheaton kick), 9:42, 1st.

EW — No. 9 1 run (No. 21 kick), 4:41, 1st.

SN — Jaden Hartsfield 14 run (Wheaton kick), 4:00, 1st. (24 pass Isaiah Battle to Luke Faulkner)

SN — Israel Whitaker 22 pass from Battle (kick failed), 9:27, 2nd.

EW — No. 1 2 pass from No. 15 (No. 21 kick), 2:52, 2nd.

SN — Whitaker 11 pass from Battle (Hartsfield run), 0:28, 2nd.

SN — Mitchell 9 run (Faulkner run), 0:05, 2nd.

SN — Mitchell 91 kick return (Hartsfield run), 11:43, 3rd.

EW — No. 7 30 pass from No. 15 (No. 21 kick), 8:59, 3rd.

EW — No. 9 1 run (No. 21 kick), 8:15, 3rd. (EW kickedd off and SN player didn’t pick it up)

SN — Mitchell 8 run (Jonathan Hines run), 4:22, 3rd.

EW — No. 14 5 pass from No. 15 (No. 21 kick), 1:18, 4th.

SN — Mitchell 52 run (Aidan Meyers kick), 1:08, 4th.

SN — Deavon Richardson 40 interception return (kick failed), 0:03, 4th.

Individual Statistics

RUSHING

Southern Nash — Tylik Mitchell 16-268, 4 TDs; Luke Faulkner 7-64; Jonathan Hines 8-25, 2-point run; Danny Dunston 2-2, Jaden Hartsfield 6-37, TD; Team 3-minus 3.

PASSING — Isaiah Battle 7-4-1, 78 yards, 2 TDs.

RECEIVING — Israel Whitaker 2-33, 2 TDs; Luke Faulkner 1-24, 2-point catch; Tylik Mitchell 1-21.

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