Three Athens County teams put the “Tri” in Tri-Valley Conference this past weekend, with blowout wins against non-conference opponents.
“Everyone just played real well across the board,” Athens coach Ryan Adams said. “Everyone played with a lot of heart and desire in order to get our community a win.”
Adams said an important factor in any win is execution of a game plan.
“We watched a tremendous amount of film,” Adams said. “We saw some things that we were able to take advantage of and put our guys into a better place to be successful.”
All three Athens-area TVC-Ohio teams played opponents they faced last season, and two, Athens and Nelsonville-York, avenged losses.
Athens
A year after their home field was destroyed by a tornado, the Bulldogs rechristened their stadium with a win that stretched beyond the box score.
Athens defeated Coal Grove 48-14, and the words “home game” never sounded so sweet.
“It’s a real home game, and we’re finally back in our home territory,” Adams said.
“It felt real good to be back in our own backyard playing football on a Friday night, and the kids were definitely excited about it.”
After a loss to Coal Grove last season, a fast 2-0 start to the season has Athens feeling good and building on last season’s 5-5 record.
“The last few years, we’ve been slow coming out of the gate week after week after week,” Adams said. “What I really like is that we came out of the gates hot and got after them from the first play.”
Alexander
The Spartans brought new meaning to the term big win by scoring 62 points with a 40-point margin of victory.
Alexander busted out offensively, defeating Huntington 62-22, but coach Sean Arno believes his team still has a lot to work on before next week’s rematch with Unioto.
“We did pretty well obviously when you score that many points, but there’s a lot of things we’re working on right now,” Arno said.
Defeating any opponent by 40 points could be viewed as a team booster, however Arno said the win is in the past as his team looks ahead to this Friday’s matchup.
“Our focus always is going to be one at a time,” he said. “We’re not looking ahead beyond this weekend and we’re trying to get better week to week.”
Nelsonville-York
The Buckeyes once again displayed success on the ground as star running back Dustin Young added another 100-yard game to his resume.
Young rushed for 177 yards on 20 carries to help lift Nelsonville-York to a 34-12 victory against Newark Catholic.
The Buckeyes totaled 357 yards on the ground, avenging last year’s loss to the Green Wave.
Similar to last week, Nelsonville-York entered halftime with a large lead, which helped them keep control of Newark Catholic to finish the game.
Turnovers were a major factor in the outcome as the Buckeyes forced four, including three interceptions.
Nelsonville-York moved to 2-0 with the win.
