Crawfordsville football came ready to play on Friday. The Athenians hosted the Danville Warriors and after giving up an opening drive touchdown the Athenian offense moved the ball right down the field an had the ball at the Danville 29. A Kaden Patton interception stalled out that drive and from then on the Warriors were able to cruise to a 51-0 win over Crawfordsville.
Overall it was an extremely rough night all around for the Athenian offense as they had -19 rushing yards and signal caller Kaden Patton threw four interceptions, all in the first half. Cville tallied just 96 yards of total offense in the game.
“I was still very proud of our guys for coming out of the gates ready to play tonight,” Crawfordsville coach Brad Clark said. “For us that’s a step in the right direction. We challenged them this week and tonight they came out with a fire and a passion. It was a tight ball game for the entire first quarter. There were some miscues by us and big plays where we didn’t communicate very well that hurt us. Some of the improvements we made in practice showed on the field and these guys will never stop fighting.”
On its opening drive of the game Danville marched right down and scored on a Ethan Wooten five yard run. Crawfordsville’s defense after the interception responded with a three and out before Danville snagged their second straight interception. Once again the Athenian defense responded with an interception of its own thanks to sophomore Tucker Pastore.
The Warriors who improve to 3-1 (2-0 SAC) with the win blanketed Cville star wide-out Ethan McLemore all game long. They held the SAC’s leading receiver to just a single catch for 21 yards. In McLemore’s absence, junior Sam Minnette did step in to snag six catches for 51 yards.
“Sam is a super reliable kid,” Clark said. “We know that he can step up when we call his number. Moving forward we still need to find a way to put the ball in McLemore’s hands way more than we did tonight. Everyone knows how great of a player he is and having him with one catch just isn’t going to get it done. E-Mac gives us everything he has because he’s also our No. 1 corner out there and made a some great plays on that end of the ball for us tonight. I don’t want to take away the impact that he had on the defensive end for us.”
The Warriors were forced to go to their back up quarterback in freshman Carter Ward after starting QB Connor Soper left the game and didn’t return with an undisclosed injury. The freshman stepped in and threw for 110 yards on 5-9 passing. Danville didn’t need to throw it often thanks to them rushing for 248 yards on the ground.
With the game in hand and just needing to kneel out the final few plays, the Warriors added one final touchdown in the game's final seconds. Then as the clock hit zero, Danville added two more to its total by converting a two-point conversion.
With the loss Cville drops to 0-4 (0-2 SAC) on the season. The next two weeks will be county games for the Athenians as they’ll travel to Southmont next Friday before welcome the Chargers two weeks from now.
“This is a fun couple weeks for our guys,” Clark said of the county matchups the next two weeks. “South is a good team and we know what they like to run. I don’t expect our energy or preparation to be a problem at all this week.”
