Serving Barnwell County and it's neighbors since 1852
The Blackville-Hilda Hawks traveled to Denmark last Friday, September 20 to face the Vikings from Denmark-Olar. The two local rivals fought a classic back-and-forth battle until Blackville-Hilda scored in the fourth quarter to seal the 20-12 victory for the Hawks.
On paper, this seemed like it might be a relatively easy game for the Hawks who entered the contest at 3-1 and ranked in the top 10 in the state for “A” football. The Vikings came into the game with a record of 1-3. Most everyone knows that you do not play these games on paper and when two local rivals come together, you can throw rankings and records out the window. This was a classic battle between two rivals who are just down the road from each other.
Blackville-Hilda got out to a 6-0 lead in the first quarter, but the Vikings answered in the second quarter to bring the score to 6-6 and that score would stand going into halftime. Fans at this game could tell that the second half would be exciting. The Hawks and Vikings did not disappoint, with both teams scoring in the third quarter to bring the score to 14-12 in favor of the Hawks. This set up a fourth quarter where either team could pull out the win with a single score.
The Hawks started to take control in the final period. Blackville-Hilda added another touchdown and the defense would keep the Vikings from reaching the end zone. The Hawks came away with the 20-12 win and improved to 4-1 on the year, while the Vikings fell to 1-4.
Blackville-Hilda head coach Kevin Jones was asked about his team’s win over Denmark-Olar and said, “We finished our non-region portion of the schedule with another close and physical game. Any win is a good win and the fact it came in a rivalry game makes it even better. Our kids played hard but we made far too many mistakes during the game. You have to tip your hat to Denmark-Olar because those kids played hard the whole game and they had a plan in place that caused some issues for us throughout the night. While we are 4-1 headed into region play, I don’t feel we have played our best football yet.”
Coach Jones continued saying, “We moved the ball on several occasions in the game but got bogged down in the red zone a few times. We had too many mistakes up front in our blocking scheme. Our backs also missed some key blocks and our receivers dropped several passes that would have resulted in big plays.”
“We went into the wishbone in the second half to simplify our blocking scheme upfront and to cut down on some of the mistakes. It worked well for us and we were able to run the ball effectively with Jaquel Holman, Namair Anderson and Samari Williams,” he said.
Defensively, Coach Jones said his team “played with a lot of effort again. We had some breakdowns there as well but overall the defense played plenty well enough for us to get the win. We were able to force a couple of interceptions with Kaiden Aiken and Darius Jenkins each getting a pick for us. Our return game on special teams for both kick offs and punts continues to be a bright spot for us.”
Blackville-Hilda will get the chance to fix a few of their problems with this upcoming “bye” week.
“We have this week off to clean some things up. As we head into region play, we have to be able to spread it out some on offense and make people pay for being blitz heavy against us. The wishbone is a nice package to have but it isn’t something that most teams want to run 100 percent of the time throughout the season, especially when you have guys like we do that can make plays in the open field. We have to cut down on our penalties and be more consistent up front on offense if we want to have a chance to compete for the region,” said Jones.
Next week, Blackville-Hilda will begin region play, traveling to face Ridge Spring-Monetta on Friday, October 4. Come out and support the Hawks as they look to improve to 5-1 on the season, but more importantly, 1-0 in region play. Go Hawks!
