Rhea County Racks Up 453 Yards On Ground in 48-3 Win Over Lenoir City
September 20, 2019
Evensville, TN -- Rhea County had nice crowd for homecoming 2019. Teams played last year with Eagles winning 21-7. The result this year would be another win, but the manner of the win was much more dominant as Eagles won 48-3. After Maddie Smith was named "Homecoming Queen", it was time for football.
Eagles struck first with Hampton running ball last two time of serveral play drive. Hampton had 17 yard run and then a 3 yard run for the touchdown to finish drive. Ochoa's kick sailed through crossbars for the 7-0 lead.
Shortly after Panthers drove down into Eagle territory but settled for field goal from the nine yard line to cut Eagle lead to 7-3 with 2:50 left in quarter. Eagles had enough time to drive down for their second touchdown of the quarter as Jackson Langley punched it in from 2 yards out and Eagles settled for 13-3 lead after Ochoa miss on extra point with 17.5 seconds left in quarter.
With 9:55 left in the first half, Dalton Hampton found the end zone again on a 26 yard touchdown run for the 20-3 lead after the Ochoa kick. With 3:51 left in the half, Ryan Young started his run up middle but shifted outside and outraced Lenoir City defenders to end zone for another Eagles touchdown. Ochoa kick put score at 27-3 and that was the halttime score.
Langley added a 40 yard touchdown run in the third quarter after a Destin Shelfer interception for a 34-3 lead with 7:25 left in third. After Eagle defense stopped Panthers it was Jackson Langley with the 35 yard touchdown run down the right sideline to give Eagles a 41-3 lead after the Ochoa kick with 4:15 left in third.
Dillon Reed gave ball back to Eagles on interception at Panthers 33 with time running out in the third. Bradley Goodwin quickly added to the Eagle total with a 33 yard touchdown run to run Eagle lead to 48-3 with 51 seconds left in third.
Neither team scored in the fourth and Eagles pushed record to 4-0.
After game Coach Pemberton talked to team, "We have a little better ball club next week in Gibbs. Proud of you and love your. Great week back after open date. You guys have come such a long way. We are getting stronger and stronger as the year goes on."
Later Coach talked to reporters and said, "We had a really good week(in practice) last week. The guys have worked hard this week, especially in the weight room. I can tell the difference in the last two week from their work in the weight room. This team has a really good chemistry to it and they really play for each other."
"We are heading into the meat of the schedule. This group has put in more work than any team I have ever had. We started as soon as season was over last year. We worked non-stop and you can tell it. We knew we had to get physically better. It's really amazing the transformation of some of these kids strength wise. With strength comes confidence and with confidence comes better play."
Coach Peemberton talked about defense and the young players growing.
"At times we have 6 or 7 sophomores on defense. Talk about getting some great playing time and experience. It is a good mix of juniors and seniors. Really happy with the way our sophomores are playing. We have given up some yardage and we have to get some things solved on defense in the passing game. Run-wise on defense, we have done really well."
"Three really good teams coming up on the road. They get better every week(Gibbs, Ooltewah and Red Bank). Three really good teams. Hopefully we can continue to play well and improve.
Eagles have a trip to Knox Gibbs coming up on Friday to begin a three game road trip before returning home to face Soddy in a huge region game. Gibbs is 3-2 on the year and is coming off a 32-14 win over Campbell County last Friday night. Gibbs is located @ 7628 Tazewell Pike in Corrytown, Tennessee. The drive from Rhea County High School looks to be 1 hour and 35 minutes.
Interesting facts: Rhea County did not punt. Eagles only completed 1 pass for 15 yards. Eagles only had two more first downs than Lenior City(16-14). 23 different Eagles were involved in a tackle with solo or assist.
Rushing by quarter: 110 143 126 74 = 453 Langley 150 and Hampton 112 continued to have triple digit rushing stats and in the game both averaged over 10 yards per carry. Ryan Young had nice night with 75 yards and a touchdown on only 5 carries and Bradley Goodwin picked up 32 yards and a touchdown on 3 carriers.
Coach Pemberton refered to cleaning up penalties in post game talk to team as they accumulated 65 yards on 8 penalties and they were penalties that caused touchdowns to be called back.
Seniors Dillon Reed and Destin Shelfer came up with interceptions on the night and Caden Wicks and Drew Fisher each had 1 sack for the game.
On defesnse it was Drew Fisher who wa in on 12 tackles to lead the Eagles. Bradley Goodwin also had double figures tackle involvements with 10. Three Eagles were invovled in 6 tackles: Destin Shelfer, Avery Alday and Sir Alloway. Jacob Stringfellow, Gavin Roddy and Caleb Burress each were in on 5 tackles.
On Monday, Jacob Stringfellow picked up the local defensive player of the week presented by Southeast Bank and Ethan McConnell picked up the offensive player of the week, awarded by First Bank , giving recognition to the offensive line that have re-energized the running game this year.