CONVERSE — Eastern’s football team looked nothing like a team that had lost more than 4,500 yards of offense from last year’s squad on its opening drive on Friday night at Oak Hill.
The Comets received the opening kickoff and proceeded to string together a seven-play, 80-yard precision opening drive that saw sophomore quarterback Gibson Eagle complete three of his first four passes, all to Braylen Word for 62 total yards, including a 26-yard touchdown pass to a diving Word in the end zone for a 6-0 lead just over 3:00 into the game.
Unfortunately, from there, the Eastern lost that initial spark, fading down the stretch and falling 30-19 to the host Golden Eagles in the teams’ longstanding Week 1 rivalry.
“We just didn’t put a full drive together after that,” Eastern coach Josh Edwards said. “Good job by Oak Hill. A great program, great kids, great coaches. But at the same time I just felt like there were kids that were trying to do other people’s jobs. And that’s the big thing we stress. And defensively especially, we didn’t do our job. We’ll clean that up. I’m not disappointed in the kids’ effort. The effort was good, but the execution was poor in some areas.”
Case in point: following the Comets initial score, Oak Hill’s Drake Pond took the ensuing kickoff 94 yards nearly untouched to paydirt, knotting the score at 6-all just :15 after Eastern’s strong opening drive.
“We needed to make them play from behind, and I feel like we only did that for about eight seconds,” Josh Edwards said. “That’s killer, that return. It deflates you a little bit. But I was proud. We come down again, nice drive, put points on the board and take the lead back. But really defensively, we didn’t make plays.”
On Eastern’s second drive, a 14-play drive that also went 80 yards, the Comets got as close as the Eagle 11 before settling for a 34-yard Owen Tolle field goal and 9-6 lead early in the second quarter.
Oak Hill responded with a nine-play drive, scoring after a 40-yard Lance Wyrick touchdown run was negated by a penalty when Carlos Cristobal broke loose for a 19-yard run that put Oak Hill up 13-9.
The Comets again drove deep into Oak Hill territory, but on first-and-goal at the five, Oak Hill’s Beckham Lamb snagged Eagle’s pass attempt. From there, the Eagles marched 96 yards to close the half with a 27-yard Drew Elzinga field goal and a 16-9 halftime lead.
“We had a play called and I think the play would have been there but the guy who was running the route actually got knocked down by one of our linemen and didn’t even get in the route,” Josh Edwards said. “Hindsight is 20/20 and we probably should have chucked it out of bounds. But, sophomore starter in his first varsity game, I thought he played a heck of a ball game. I’m super proud of him. He had great poise in the pocket, that interception would have been the only flaw in his game tonight as far as decision making.”
In his first varsity start, Eagle completed 18 of 24 passes for 174 yards. His favorite target was Word, who caught seven passes for 86 yards, but he spread the wealth. Kaleb Hurt caught six passes for 40 yards, Abe Edwards had four catches for 42 yards, and Levi Ramer had a six-yard catch.
After the teams traded punts on their opening drives of the second half, Oak Hill turned the ball over on downs and Eastern punted again in a scoreless third quarter.
Oak Hill tacked on a pair of fourth quarter scores, on a Dylan Archer 3-yard run and an Isaac Mitchener 1-yard run before Eagle scored from four yards out for the Comets first points since the first quarter with :21 to play.
“Take away the kickoff return and then we score when we’re on the four and had that interception and it’s a tie ball game,” Josh Edwards said. “Right now we’re looking for leaders. I think that’s what was lacking in those crucial moments, like 16-9 we’ve got to get a stop and we did at first but then we didn’t execute on offense.”
Eastern also dug itself a hole with penalties. While the Comets didn’t commit an overwhelming amount, they came at critical times, such as two offside penalties as Oak Hill drove the field for its field goal to close the first half.
“Our goal is three mental mistakes or less and we had more than three mental mistakes,” Josh Edwards said. “Breaking the huddle slow, delay of game, having to burn timeouts because we weren’t going to get the play off. Those are some things we’ve got to correct.”
Isaiah Pickett led Eastern’s ground game with 81 yards on eight carries.
For Oak Hill, Wyrick had 125 yards on 15 carries as the Eagles picked up 304 yards with their ground game.
