Ground down

A total of 11 Vikings registered at least one carry.

More than half of them reached the end zone.

Huntington North scored seven times, each by a different player, in racking up 502 yards — all on the ground — handing the Jay County High School football team a 47-8 loss Friday night at Harold E. Schutz Stadium.

“We feel like one of our growth areas from last year is we have a lot of guys that can run the ball,” said HNHS coach Bob Prescott, a 1985 JCHS graduate who made his return to Portland for the first time since becoming a head coach in 1993. “We want to make sure we’re balanced.

“We need to have some balance because of how fast our up-tempo, no-huddle (offense) goes … It’s nice to reward that many kids so they can get a touchdown.”

The Vikings (1-1) bunched the offensive formation with two tight ends. A pair of wings lined up behind the line of scrimmage but inside the tight ends, and they had a running back in the backfield.

Whether it was a dive to either side of the center, a counter play or a sweep to the edge, the Patriots (0-2) had difficulty first finding the ball carrier and then bringing him down.

“They get so many guys through the hole,” said JCHS coach Tim Millspaugh, whose team has lost consecutive games to begin the year in back-to-back seasons. “It’s a bunch of people you have to sift through to get to the football.”

Penalties and a pair of incomplete passes halted the Vikings’ first drive of the game, but from then on each possession resulted in a touchdown.

Zach Hubartt’s 1-yard dive started a stretch of 40 consecutive points for the Vikings, who dropped their season opener to Warsaw a week earlier. Lawson Shearer found the end zone from the 11-yard line early in the second quarter before quarterback Reid Johnson called his own number, a dive up the middle from the 1 on the next possession.

Lucas Thorn also scored from the 1 with 3:31 left before the half as Huntington North led 27-0, a margin which stood at intermission.

The first HNHS drive of the second half started on the Patriot 44-yard line, and Aden Dennis capped a three-play drive with a touchdown run from the 18. The Vikings needed five plays to cover 63 yards on their ensuing possession, capped by a 10-yard TD run up the gut from Sam Close.

Dennis led the HNHS rushing attack — it averaged 10.2 yards per carry compared to Jay County’s 6 yards per play — with 88 yards. Garrett Johnson added 84 yards and Thorn tallied 64. Johnson’s 10 carries were the most by any Viking.

Jay County, which still does not have an opponent for week three after Southern Wells announced it would not play a varsity schedule this season, wasn’t able to keep up with the up-tempo pace of Huntington North’s offense, and by halftime the Patriots showed signs of being gassed.

“We’re just have to get in better shape,” Millspaugh said. “That’s a responsibility that I have. I understand why they (went up-tempo). There’s nothing we can do about it. We just have to get in shape.”

It wasn’t until the running clock was in effect that Jay County scored its first touchdown of the season. 

Bailey Cox, a JCHS senior, covered all but six of the 70 yards in the Patriots’ scoring drive. On second-and-10 from the Jay County 42, he scampered 25 yards up the middle to the Viking 33. After no gain by Quinn Faulkner, who earlier in the game had a 41-yard run, Cox matched his jersey number and scored on a 33-yard run.

“There’s spots where we’re doing good things, we’re just not consistent enough yet,” Millspaugh said. Cox finished with 106 yards on 18 carries. “We still have a lot of work to do to get consistently executing like we need to. But when we do I think we have a chance to move the ball.”

Friday’s win was the second for Prescott against his alma mater while leading the Vikings, and he said returning to Portland for the first time in nearly three decades brought on many feelings for him.

“Just so many great memories, just so many great people,” he said. Prescott was an assistant for both Tom Bruin and Butch Gray before starting his coaching career in 1994 at Peru. 

“I’m sure as I get on the bus and we start going home those (emotions) will really flow,” he continued. “It’s not easy on a place that you love and care about to be on this sideline trying to compete against them.”