Catawba Ridge football opens season 5-0 for first time after big win over Chester
Catawba Ridge outscored Chester by 18 points in the second half as the Copperheads ran past the Cyclones, 45-27, Friday night.
Down 27-21 midway through the third quarter, Catawba Ridge held Chester scoreless for the final 21 minutes of the game on its way to a fifth consecutive win to open the season.
The Copperheads’ defense had allowed 14 points in their previous four games combined, but on Friday allowed 21 points in the first half.
“Credit to Chester,” Catawba Ridge head coach Zac Lendyak said. “They had a great game plan. They have a great coaching staff, and they were able to find some stuff that worked and got us a little frustrated. But Coach Ross and the defensive crew made some really good adjustments in there and just understood that if we play assignment football, which we weren’t doing in the first half, we felt like we could get much better results.”
In the second half, the Catawba Ridge defense allowed Chester to score a touchdown on its opening possession. The Cyclones’ final four drives ended in two interceptions and two punts.
“We were fresh,” Chester head coach Victor Floyd said. “With what we saw on tape, we were able to take advantage of a few things. In the second half, they made some adjustments and we didn’t adjust well based on what they did. They have a quality team and they were able to pull it out.”
Catawba Ridge made a big change on offense to start the second half, as well, playing junior Davin ‘DJ’ Latimer in place of starter Nate Thomas.
“We were just looking for a spark, you know,” Lendyak said. “The defense was out there a lot. We knew we had to go run heavy, and with DJ stepping in, DJ gives us that quarterback run option. And you saw it worked pretty well tonight at a couple times. When you have the option to run it with the quarterback, you keep that defense a little bit more honest.”
Latimer scored a rushing touchdown and led the team on four consecutive scoring drives to open the second half before kneeling it out on the final drive.
“I just added an extra leg to the offense,” Latimer said. “The offensive line did a great job making holes for (running backs) Tyler Jones, Evan Hamilton and Ira Mister. Also my tight end Brady Ambrose was pulling, and he made some great holes for me.”
The Copperheads are 5-0 for the first time and are heading into region play with a lot of momentum.
“You want to win them all,” Lendyak said. “But it’s not where you want to stay. If we don’t keep working, we’ll finish 5-5. Nobody wants to do that, but we’re also proud of what we’ve done. To be 5-0, there’s not a ton of teams that can say that.”
The 2-3 start to the season might seem less than ideal for Chester, but for Floyd, these were the challenges the team wanted and expected coming into the year.
“The whole thing is to play a tough non-region schedule,” Floyd said. “So we can go through the lumps and bruises and deal with adversity and learn how to handle it. Now, we get into region play, and we’ve been in about every scenario you can think of and hopefully it’ll pay off in the long run.”
Catawba Ridge has played its final non-region match of the season and will go on the road to face South Pointe. The Cyclones will play one final non-region game at home against Batesburg-Leesville next weekend.
Both games will be next Friday at 7:30 p.m.