Football falls to Franklin on “Pink-Out” night
By Kellen Browning,
Bluedevilhub.com Editor-in-Chief–
The Franklin Wildcats scored five touchdowns in the second quarter en route to a decisive, 60-21 victory over Davis’ football team on Friday, Oct. 16.
Playing in front of a home crowd for the third time this season on “Pink-Out” night–students were encouraged to dress in pink to support breast cancer awareness–the Blue Devils came out aggressively in the first quarter, holding Franklin to a single touchdown.
Senior wide receiver Glen Welch scored a 30-yard touchdown off of senior quarterback Jack Beckman’s pass with just under a minute to go in the first quarter, tying the score 7-7. DHS fans at first celebrated prematurely when junior tight end Tucker Fisk made it to the end zone earlier in the same possession, but several penalties were called on the play.
Other DHS tallies came from Beckman’s 29-yard run right before half time and sophomore tight end Will Smith’s 16-yard touchdown toward the end of the third quarter.
But it was the disastrous second quarter–which included two turnovers that led to Franklin touchdowns–that doomed the Blue Devils, who fell to 3-4 (1-3 in Delta League play). Fisk blamed mistakes on plays for the loss.
“Guys would get tricked by a play or they wouldn’t play their assignment—and when you don’t play your assignment, bad things happen,” he said.
Defensive coordinator Ty Brown took responsibility for the defeat.
“When you give up 60 points […] it starts with me,” Brown said, clearly frustrated. “I’m going to see what we can do better, I’m going to look schematically at what we did […] I’m going to figure out what we can do better as coaches to get these kids better.”
Still, the DHS offense showed plenty of positive signs–offensive assistant coach Josh Reese mentioned Welch’s and Smith’s gameplay as “a couple of shining spots” in particular.
“We have guys that are able to do good things when they have the opportunity to do it,” Reese said, “It’s just a matter of being able to do it every single time, being able to execute.”
The Blue Devils were simply outmatched by the Wildcats, who played strong enough in the opening half that they forced DHS to “change our game plan,” according to Reese.
“We kind of got put into a hole and it kind of limited what we really wanted to do and execute, ’cause we’re pretty good at a lot of things that we couldn’t do tonight,” he said.
The Devils next play Pleasant Grove on Friday, Oct. 23, and Fisk said that despite the setback, the season’s goal is still the same: playoffs.
