By Edgar Martin
Twitter – @EdgarMartin97
Last night two undefeated Class 1A high school football teams faced off as the regular season is coming close to an end. The Hawthorne Hornets hosted the Chiefland Indians.
The Indians were coming off a 45-6 win against Hilliard looking to keep their six-game winning streak alive, while the Hornets were looking to start their homecoming weekend off positive after beating Stanton (Jacksonville), 65-0, on the road, keeping their five-game winning streak alive.
This game was hard fought on both ends with the first half ending tied 7-7. Both teams played tremendous defense, however neither team could do much offensively from the excessive amount of penalties throughout the night in this first half.
After halftime, it was clear that Hawthorne head coach Cornelius Ingram gave a well-thought plan on how to dominate the second half. Besides penalties, the Hornets corrected many of the other mistakes as possible and exposed the holes in Chiefland’s defense.
Hawthorne ended up with a runaway four touchdown lead in the third and fourth quarter, winning the game 42-14.
At first the Indians defense played strong but could not get off the field due to continuous penalties nor capitalize offensively. Chiefland takes their first loss of the season making them 6-1, while Hawthorne remains an unbeaten 6-0.
“The most physical team won,” Chiefland coach Adam Gore told the Gainesville Sun. “Hats off to them. The team that played with the most effort won. We pride ourselves at being physical and we didn’t show up tonight, for whatever reason. We got tight coaching in the second half. And a couple of bad things happened to start the second half. They controlled the line of scrimmage all night long.”
The Indians hope to take this learning experience and do better next week as they face Bronson High School for their next away game, and the Hornets look to keep the streak alive as they play Union County (Lake Butler) at home next week for their Senior Night.
