By Mark Carpenter
People’s Defender
A warm and sunny August 7 evening greeted the junior high football squads at Veterans Stadium in Manchester as the Greyhounds welcomed to town the Fayetteville Rockets.
A lack of numbers this season forced Fayetteville to cancel their high school football season, but they brought a solid junior high team to Manchester last week and gave Coach Larry Heller’s Greyhounds a good old fashioned thumping, heading back to northern Brown County with an impressive 46-8 win in their pockets.
In the first quarter of last Wednesday’s game, the Greyhounds got the game’s first break, a Rocket fumble recovered by the Hounds’ Clayton Colvin. The Manchester offense could no capitalize and were forced to punt and them the Fayetteville offense too over. With 7:30 left in the second quarter, a 68-yard touchdown gallop by Charlie Coffman and a two-point run by Lane Attinger gave the visitors an 8-0 lead.
After another Manchester punt, the Rockets again flashed big-play ability and again it was Coffman, this time busting loose for a 69-yard scoring run. A two-point conversion run by Dylan Adams gave Fayetteville a 16-0 halftime advantage.
After being blanked in the first half, the Hounds got on the board on the first play of the third period, on a Fayetteville possession. Manchester’s Dylon Fite, who recorded numerous tackles on the night, picked off a Rocket pass and returned it 50 yards for the touchdown. A two-point run by Colvin seemed to put the Hounds right back in the game, trailing now 16-8. The Rockets had other ideas.
On their next offensive possession, the Rockets drove downfield and got a 14-yard TD run from Coffman and another two-point run from Adams to make it 24-8 and it was downhill from then on for the home team. The Greyhound offense was again forced to punt and with just 24 seconds left in the third, the Rockets were on the board again, a long drive ending in Coffman scoring again, this time from 12 yards out. The conversion run from Trenton Strunk made it 32-8 as the third quarter closed.
The Greyhound offense continued to sputter as the fourth quarter began and another punt resulted in another Fayetteville touchdown, the fifth of the game for the talented Coffman, who ran it in from 29 yards out. The two-point try was stopped but the Rockets were firmly in control with a 38-8 lead.
The Greyhound offense fumbled the ball away on their next possession and that led to the game’s final touchdown, and the sixth for Coffman, this time he hauled in a pass for the score and the ensuing two-point conversion gave the Rockets their final points in a dominant 46-8 victory.
The tough loss dropped the junior high Hounds to 0-3 on the season and they will look for their first win of the campaign when they entertain Sciotoville East on Thursday, September 15. The Hounds fell to East 22-18 in their season opener.