Clover season ends in one-sided affair

Initially getting just one hand on the ball, Cloverdale's McGuire Lee hauls in a 21-yard catch in the second quarter Friday night. Lee caught three passes for 72 yards in the Clovers' sectional loss to Riverton Parke.

Banner Graphic/JARED JERNAGAN

CLOVERDALE — The scoreboard at Cloverdale High School read 54-0 going into the Clovers’ final drive Friday night.

The Clovers appear to have actually been trailing 60-0 at the time, but that only underscores a point coach Tom Winders made about his team afterward.

“We can’t look up at the scoreboard and necessarily say by that score we lost the game. They’ve still got a lot of fight in them,” Winders said. “These kids have a lot of heart, they really do. We just don’t have the physical ability as of yet, but we will.”

The Clovers showed that heart on the final drive, setting aside the fact that their season was about to end and embarking on a 12-play, 70-yard drive that ended when freshman quarterback Tayt Jackson found the end zone as time expired.

The Clovers fell to the Panthers 60-6.

The scoreboard discrepancy seems to have arisen in the second quarter, when Derron Hazzard scampered 58 yards for his fifth touchdown of the night. However, only the successful PAT run, not the touchdown, was recorded on the scoreboard, as the score went from 46-0 before the touchdown to 48-0 after the touchdown and PAT.

The scoreboard operator can be forgiven, considering the whirlwind pace at which the Panthers (3-6), and Hazzard in particular, were scoring on Friday.

The senior rushed for 408 yards and five touchdowns on just nine carries. Four of his five touchdowns were the only play of the drive. Each Hazzard score measured between 50 and 88 yards.

Running just 23 plays on the night, the Panthers racked up 561 yards of total offense — all rushing — for an astounding 25.5 yards per play.

“In the first half, we couldn’t stop the run,” Winders said. “We struggled with that.”

The homesteading Clovers (0-8) were less efficient, gaining 152 yards on 51 plays.

However, the scoring chances were there for Cloverdale, which had two first-half drives reach inside the Panther 15 before stalling out.

McGuire Lee hauled in the only three receptions for the Clovers for 72 yards. Two of those came from Jackson for 51 years, with the other was a 21-yard halfback pass from Xavier Evans.

Conner Holder led the Cloverdale running attack with 41 yards on 14 carries.

After watching a young, undermanned team persevere through an 0-8 season with many nights like this one, Winders chose to focus on the fighting spirit of his team.

“The fight in these kids — we’re going out with 13 to 16 kids every game and that’s hard to do in football. It’s hard to match that up,” Winders said. “The other key is, we’re a very young football team. We had six starting freshmen and three starting sophomores.

“This football team should mostly be on JV by grade,” he continued. “And you take them out there and they win a bunch of football games. Unfortunately, we’re having to take it up to the varsity level, but they didn’t give up.”

A bit of that fighting spirit got Winders in trouble late in the first half. While returning a kick, Evans absorbed a pretty obvious helmet-to-helmet hit that went uncalled. Standing up for his player, Winders quickly accrued two unsportsmanlike conduct calls and was sent to the locker room.

The coach wasn’t completely off base, though, as Evans also did not return to the game as a precautionary measure.

Winders regrets the lopsided end for Evans and his fellow seniors Conner Holder, Zane Harris, Ethan Mosier and Ethan Wright.

“I hate it for our seniors because you never want to end it on a bad note like we did tonight, but the kids did fight,” Winders said. “We didn’t have very many of them, only five. Two of them hadn’t played football before, three of them had and those kids have been here since they were freshmen. They were here during some successful years and it makes it tough when you can’t build year to year.”

The Panthers advance to host Covington on Friday, Oct. 29 in the Sectional 45 semifinal.

Scoring

1st Quarter

RP: Cox 49-yd run (Robins run) 11:04, 8-0

RP: Hazzard 78-yd run (Cox run) 7:12, 16-0

RP: Hazzard 88-yd run (Robins run) 2:07, 24-0

RP: Robins 32-yd run (Cox run) 0:03, 32-0

2nd Quarter

RP: Hazzard 50-yd run (run failed) 6:25, 38-0

RP: Hazzard 70-yd run (Purcell run) 4:33, 46-0

RP: Hazzard 58-yd run (Robins run) 2:07, 54-0

3rd Quarter

RP: Lebron 1-yd run (run failed) 0:26, 60-0

4th Quarter

CHS: Jackson 15-yd run (no PAT) 0:00 60-6

Individual statistics

Rushing

Riverton Parke — 22-561 yards, 8 TDs — Hazzard 9-408 5 TDs, Cox 3-60 1 TD, Robins 3-37 1 TD, Price 4-36, Lebron 3-20 1 TD.

Cloverdale — 36-80 yard, 1 TD — Holder 14-41, Jackson 15-32 1 TD, Lee 1-6, Evans 2-4, Bridges 1-0, Helton 3-(-3).

Passing

Riverton Parke — 0-1, 0 yards — Lebron 0-1-0.

Cloverdale — 3-15, 72 yards — Jackson 2-14-51, Evans 1-1-21.

Receiving

Cloverdale — 3 receptions, 72 yards — Lee 3-72