Speedway races to victory over Cloverdale 27-6
SPEEDWAY -- Cloverdale dropped its season opener to the Speedway Sparkplugs Friday night, 27-6, but take away a couple bad plays and the story would have been different.
"We had more mental mistakes and missed tackles than I wanted tonight," CHS coach Kyle Winkler said.
Speedway's first two touchdowns could be contributed to missed tackles.
On their opening drive, the Sparkplugs had two 10 or more yard runs that eventually set them up for a 10-yard touchdown pass and their second one came when Michael Hubbard broke through the Clovers defensive line and ran for a 44-yard touchdown.
"We didn't have a whole lot of time to prepare for their offense and when you mix in missed tackles you get this," Winkler said.
The mental mistakes came in the form of poor passing decisions. Jordan Hayden and Jordan Brinkman had three interceptions combined. One of Brinkman's picks led to a touchdown drive for the Sparkplugs in the second quarter.
The Clovers lone touchdown came right after Speedways opening touchdown drive in the first quarter.
The Clovers started on Speedways 39-yard line and marched down field for a 23-yard touchdown run by Dillian Gray. The Clovers then tried to take the lead by attempting a two point conversion and succeeded the first time, but an illegal procedure call nullified the two points and sent the Clovers back five yards where they failed to punch it in.
"When we hit our assignments, we moved the ball. But when we missed our tackling assignments we didn't," Winkler said.
Cloverdale nearly scored two other times on fourth down in the red zone, but could not complete the passes and turned the ball over on downs both times.
One person that impressed Winkler was the Sparkplugs quarterback, Jonny West.
"My hats off to that quarterback," Winkler said about West. "He was outstanding and ran his team's offense well."
West through for 173 yards Friday night and had two touchdown passes and only one interception, courtesy of Donovan Scisney in the first quarter.
"We have West Vigo at home next week so we are going to go to work in practice on Monday and hope we can win at home," Winkler said.
Cloverdale host West Vigo on Friday at At Speedway
Cloverdale 6 0 0 0 -- 6
Speedway 13 7 7 0 -- 27
First Quarter
SP -- Dunn 10 run, 9:24 (Kick Missed)
CL -- Gray 23 run 6:18 (two point fail)
SP -- Hubbard 44 punt return 3:45 (Walton kick)
Second Quarter
SP -- West 11 pass to Maloian 1:17 (Eggert Kick)
Third Quarter
SP -- Dunn 2 run 4:12 (Eggert Kick)
Team stats
Rushing -- CL (38-124-1), SP (23-200-2)
Passing -- CL (7-106-0-3), SP (15-173-2-1)
Individual Stats
Rushing
CL -- Gray 8-90, 1 TD; Scisney 16-40, Brinkman 4- (-6)
SP -- Hubbard 7-130, 1 TD; Dunn 7-24, 1 TD; Maloian 2-24, West 2-24; Shambaugh 1-4; Carter 2-13; Judkins 2-8,
Passing
CL -- Hayden 4-13-61-0-1 int.; Brinkman 3-5-45-0-0
SP -- West 15-24-173-2-1
Receiving
CL -- Lockwood 4-69; Osburn 2-32, Moore 1-5
SP -- Shaw 2-30, Dunn 2-15-1, Shambaugh 3-38, Hubbard 2-26, Bouman 3-56, Maloian 2-8-1