VEEDERSBURG — Southmont football experience showed off in the biggest way on Friday as the Mounties opened up their 2022 season on the road against Fountain Central. The first three drives for the Mountie offense all began in Mustang territory and at the end in the first five minutes of the game Southmont jumped out to a 21-0 lead. Fountain Central would score a couple of scores late in the fourth including a 76-yard kickoff return touchdown on the games final play. When the clock hit all zeros it was the Mounties celebrating a dominating season-opening 55-12 win.
The Mounties got the first score of the game on a 12-yard touchdown run by Carson Chadd and just two plays later Kion Cornelius intercepted Mustang QB Owen Acton and returned to the Mustang two-yard line. That set up a Wyatt Woodall two-yard score. Things quickly got worse for the Mustangs as on their next offensive drive Acton would lose a fumble and on the first play at the FC 18, senior signal caller for the Mounties Nick Scott found Seth Tolliver who made a leaping, contested catch for the score.
Overall in the game South’s defense set the tone holding the Mustangs to just 77 total yards, while the Mounties accumulated 360 of their own, 303 of that coming on the ground.
“We wanted our defense to do just that,” Southmont coach Desson Hannum said of his defense. “We talked about being suffocating on that side of the ball and be able to give our offense chances to build an early lead. We were able to play a fast and physical style of football and our defense did a phenomenal job of setting the tone.”
Overall 13 different Mounties touched the ball on the ground and Scott only had to throw the ball five times and completed four of those passes for 57 total yards as the Mounties racked up 360 yards of offense.
“We had a lot of experienced guys who just itching to play this evening,” Hannum added. “I think that really showed as we were able to get our backups in and even our JV guys some time as well.”
Acton was the leading rusher in the game for the Mustangs as he ran for 35 yards on 15 carries. Luke Foxworthy caught the only two completions by Acton for 23 total yards.
First-year Mustang coach Herb King gave all the credit to the Mounties after the game for coming out and earning a first week win.
“They simply have a great football team and I see them winning many games,” King said of Southmont. “For us we can’t turn the ball over four times in the first half and expect things to go well for us. We dug ourselves a huge hole in the first quarter to begin the game and we couldn’t really stop them on defense either.”
Despite the season opening loss, King did find some positives with how his team performed.
“Our kids didn’t disintegrate with one another when things got bad,” King said. “They were still going out and talking with one another and there wasn’t anything bad going on. From that standpoint, that’s good. As long as we continue to get some quality practices in and rep the skills and drills I think we’ll improve.”
For the Mountie Hannum lastly touched on that this season especially has been a long time coming with his team. Over the course of the last several seasons Hannum has seen the development of his current team and now the results are starting to pay off.
“This just isn’t a this year type project,” he said. “This has been building for the last couple of season to have the depth and talent that we do. We’ve put in some real work in the weight room and I think that’s a big difference from previous years. Tonight you could see that these kids were excited to go out and play football again.”
The Mounties (1-0) will look to make a 2-0 start when they host North Putnam for their home opener next week while the Mustangs (0-1) will travel to Crawfordsville.
