NEW MARKET — Southmont brought the energy Friday night and responded to Crawfordsville’s best effort with a dominating third quarter on its way to a 41-14 county win.
Leading 21-8 at the half, the Mounties took the second-half opening kick-off and drove 57 yards in 4:54 capped by a 25-yard Carson Chadd touchdown to make it 27-8. Just over a minute later after the Athenians fumbled the ensuing kick-off, Chadd found pay-dirt again from 15 yards out.
In third quarter, the Mounties totaled 10 first downs and ran 24 plays to just five for Crawfordsville — stretching the lead from 13 to 26.
“We wanted to come out that second half with some fire,” Southmont coach Desson Hannum said. “We thought we left some points out there in the first half and thought we could have gotten a couple more scores there, but we were able to get them in that third quarter. It was pretty dominate with the running game and defense playing well.”
Wyatt Woodall turned 27 first half rushing yards into 117 with a 90 yard second half to lead all rushers. He scored the final Southmont touchdown early in the fourth quarter. His hard running opened the door for Chadd, who tallied 100 yards on just 13 carries, including two scores.
“Woodall, he’s a beast,” Crawfordsville coach Kurt Schlicher said. “When you’ve got to worry about tackling that fullback, that absolutely opens up some other things for them.”
Crawfordsville had just 62 yards in the second half — almost all of which came on their only scoring drive of the second half — a 1-yard touchdown run from Zeke Cardenas in the final minute of the game.
The Mounties started the game slow, but quickly found there footing.
After both offenses punted once, Southmont’s Seth Tolliver blocked a Crawfordsville punt and it was recovered by Chadd in the end-zone for a touchdown to put Southmont up 7-0 at the 5:42 mark in the first quarter.
“We were able to get the blocked punt, Tolliver to Chadd and get the score and that set the tone for the game,” Hannum said.
The Mountie offense eventually got rolling too behind a strong start from junior quarterback Nick Scott. He completed his first four passes, including a 28-yard strike to Sam Line, 29 yards to EJ Brewer, 32 to Tolliver and a 5-yard touchdown pass to Brady Boller to make it 14-0. Scott added a rushing touchdown in the second quarter.
“We saw some things and felt like we could get the ball downfield,” Hannum said. “Obviously we tried that early on and tried to loosen them up. It was good to see Nick get some more completions this evening. They were going to play us in man-coverage and we just had the opportunity to make some plays there.”
Crawfordsville’s lone score of the first half came on a 1-yard Kaiden Underwood touchdown run — but a 13-point halftime deficit was too much to overcome.
“Our turnovers really hurt us tonight,” Schlicher said. “And our inability to execute some things that we thought we could take advantage of. Southmont was very opportunistic tonight. When they needed it, they got it done.”
Cardenas led the Athenians with 66 rushing yards as Crawfordsville totaled just 154 yards for the game.
Southmont’s dominance on both sides of the ball prevailed for a fifth-straight week with 351 total yards, including 251 on the ground in front of one of the largest crowds in recent memory.
“To be able to celebrate 50 years of the school and also be able to celebrate homecoming and have a huge crowd like we did,” Hannum said. “The environment was electric here. There was a nice little buzz before the game and I felt like we fed off that and gave these kids a chance to play in an environment and a crowd like that. That’s a great memory for those guys.”
Crawfordsville falls to 0-5 overall and 0-3 in Sagamore Conference play and host North Montgomery next week, while the Mounties are 5-0 overall and 2-0 in the SAC and travel to Danville next Friday.
