JACKETS OUTSTED

The Williamsburg Yellow Jackets saw its season come to an end Friday night with a 33-8 loss to the Ashland Fairview Eagles in the first-round of the KHSAA playoffs at Williamsburg.

“It was one of those nights you look at things and ask yourself what went wrong,” said Williamsburg Coach Jerry Herron. “Not to take anything away from Fairview or our players, they just beat us up front.”

“We have great kids that worked hard but they were just a little over manned tonight,” Herron said. “They just beat us up front.”

“We tried everything in the world but nothing worked,” Herron said. “We made adjustments at halftime that worked for a little while but they made adjustments. It was unfortunate that it ended like that, the kids are sad. They worked so hard.”

“Fairview is a good football team, they play in that tough district and they get rewarded by having to play LCA in the next round,” said Herron.

The Eagles didn’t have any problem running the ball down the field in the opening minutes behind their big offensive line. Drew Boyd scored on a 12-yard run to put the Eagles ahead 6-0 in the first period. Williamsburg tried to answer with a drive of their own but was eventually stopped and turned the ball over on downs.

Fairview (8-3) scored once again as Boyd ran the ball in from the eight-yard line early in the second quarter. The Eagles missed their second extra point attempt and led 12-0.

Williamsburg quarterback Ryan Moses led the Jackets to their only score of the night as he mixed up the run and short passes to Travis Thomas, James Payne, Daniel Pettit and Dusty Brown. It was Moses scoring from two yards that closed the gap. Moses hit Steven Taylor on the conversion as Williamsburg pulled within 12-8 midway through the second period.

Boyd added his third touchdown early in the third period and Fairview began to pull away from the Jackets. The visitors added a pair of fourth quarter touchdowns to take home the 33-8 win.

“We knew we were going to have some trouble with this Fairview offense, they just run the ball right at you and we don’t handle it well when people run right at us,” said Herron. “We don’t have those 250-pound linemen that can sit in the hole and deal with that.”

“Our kids have played above their heads, we could easily been 1-9,” Herron said. “We dropped four games after the win over Jellico. We could have tucked it in and been 1-9 or 2-8, but they decided to come together and work even harder.”

“We had so much adversity, so many injuries but they kept fighting,” said Herron. “They got the runner-up in their district and earned a home playoff game.”

“We just got mauled tonight by a good football team,” he said. “They didn’t do anything different, they just came right at us.”

Moses finished the game hitting 15 of 24 passes for 205 yards. Dusty Brown had six catches for 89 yards while Steven Taylor had four catches for 50 yards. Moses led the Jackets on the ground with 57 yards on 19 carries. Thomas had 53 yards on seven attempts.

Williamsburg closed out the season 4-7.

 

Fairview 33, Williamsburg 8

Fairview            6 6 6 15- 33

Williamsburg            0 8 0    0-   8

F- Drew Boyd 12 run (run failed)

F- Boyd 8 run (run failed)

W- Ryan Moses 2 run (Moses run)

F- Boyd 2 run (run failed)

F- T.J. Shelton 15 run (Boyd run)

F- Shelton 3 run (Littlejohn kick)