WESTWOOD The late 1900s band Green Day once famously said “Wake me up when September ends.”
As September comes to a close on this year’s football season, Fairview is wide awake.
The Eagles took down Phelps 44-6 in a dominant home win that will help the Fairview faithful sleep easier and keep the Hornets fans who made the trek up all night.
And it helped ease the nightmare that the Eagles experienced the week prior against Boyd County.
“Obviously, that Boyd County game wasn’t what any of us expected,” Fairview coach Alex Roy said. “Our kids came out last week and they were kind of shell shocked. They’ve never been in an environment like that… and hats off of to Boyd County because it was a fun football environment. But, we didn’t play assignment football. So we got back to the drawing board this week and it looked a lot better. What we were able to put on paper, we were able to put on the field.”
It took less than eight minutes for the Eagles to put the game out of hand, as the home squad posted three touchdowns in just 10 offensive plays to lead 22-0 at the 4:26 mark.
“It seems like every time we travel, we come out dead,” Phelps coach Randy Smith said. “And that first half, we were dead the entire game. And then that second half is when they finally picked up and started playing. If they’d just done that from the beginning, we wouldn’t have been in the situation we were in.”
Fairview established the run game early, with Jeffery Everetts putting the first points on the board after a 33-yard touchdown run.
The Eagles got the ball back quickly after Jackson Everetts recovered a Phelps fumble, and two plays later found pay dirt on a 36-yard Jace Murray touchdown run.
Murray finished the night with 198 yards on 17 carries and a pair of touchdowns. He out rushed the entire Hornets squad for the contest.
“I go back to this week and just the amount of work we were able to put in with the offensive line,” Roy said of the run game’s success on the night. “And this wishbone is designed for creating angles and getting our running backs going downhill. We just weren’t creating those angles in the past, but tonight our guys were really working as a unit. You could see the communication factor was playing its role. I couldn’t be happier with the way things went.
“Our running backs understood that once you hit the hole, our end result is going to be towards the sideline, and I think that’s exactly what they did,” Roy added.
The trifecta of first-quarter touchdowns was capped off by Hunter Good, who called his own number on a QB sneak.
Good recorded the next touchdown in the second quarter with his arm, finding Anthony Vendetti open down the middle for a 14-yard touchdown.
Phelps was able to avoid a shutout in the waning moments of the first half thanks to a peculiar miscue by Fairview on special teams.
With just over 90 seconds to go, Fairview’s Hayden Webster was back inside his own 20 yard line to punt.
The ball was snapped to Webster, who proceeded to stand stock-still and wag his finger at the defense in his best Dikembe Mutombo impression.
After some initial looks of confusion by everyone on the field, the Hornet defense tackled Webster for a turnover on downs.
According to a Fairview assistant coach at halftime, the plan was to call a timeout as the play clock expired, but the ball was errantly snapped, though it appeared Webster though a timeout had been called.
After the moment of levity following the play passed, Phelps found the endzone in three plays, capped off by a five-yard touchdown run from Ethan Wolford.
Even with the points, the Hornets couldn’t find any rhythm in the second half, though their defense did take the ball away from the Eagles twice in the final 24 minutes.
“I want them to learn that football is just like life,” Smith said. “Sometimes you have your downs, and sometimes you have your ups. And when you have your downs, you have to learn how to pick yourself back up and keep on going.”
Much of the fourth quarter drained away as Phelps had a 12-play drive that saw 10 flags thrown, before a turnover on downs gave the ball back to Fairview.
Murray then ripped a 76-yard touchdown run on the next play to give the game a running clock, which expired after Fairview took a knee on the conversion attempt.
For Fairview, the win goes a long way in building confidence for the players. Roy wants his team to build momentum from the night’s win as district opponents approach.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re 4-2, 0-5, 0-6… it’s 0-0 at this point; a completely different season.,” Roy said. “And what I told them is, we have to take it one week at a time. We could be complacent. We could go 0-3 in district, take our trip to Sayre and be done the first week in November. Or, we can come in, take it one week at a time, lock in, and who knows what could happen?”
PHELPS 0 6 0 0 — 6
FAIRVIEW 22 8 0 14 — 44
FIRST QUARTER
F— Jeffery Everetts 33 run (Jace Murray run), 9:37
F— Murray 36 run (Armani Burnside run), 7:58
F— Hunter Good 2 run (no run), 4:26
SECOND QUARTER
F— Anthony Vendetti 14 pass from Hunter Good (Murray run), 9:38
P— Ethan Wolford 5 run (no pass), 0:07
FOURTH QUARTER
F— Good 4 run (Murray run), 11:23
F— Murray 76 run (no run), 1:53
P F
First Downs 9 11
Rushes-Yards 177 331
Comp-Att-Int 1-11-1 2-3-0
Passing Yards 10 56
Fumbles-Lost 4-3 5-2
Punts-Avg. 1-26 0-0
Penalties-Yards 12-107 6-70
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Phelps rushing: Ethan Fields 9-75, Ethan Wolford 12-46, Logan Grubb 4-37, Joshua Caines 5-19, Reece Norman 2-2, Gavin Hamilton 1-(-2).
Fairview rushing: Jace Murray 17-198, Jeffery Everetts 5-86, Armani Burnside 6-38, Hunter Good 3-5, Hayden Webster 1-4.
Phelps passing: Reece Norman 1 of 11 for 10 yards and 1 interception.
Fairview passing: Hunter Good 2 of 3 for 41 yards and 0 interceptions.
Phelps receiving: Gavin Hamilton 1-10.
Fairview receiving: Jeffery Everetts 1-42, Anthony Vendetti 1-14.
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