Was it clean? Not necessarily, but there was no way of walking out of Fork Union’s meeting with second-ranked St. Christopher’s without feeling that the Blue Devils owned both sides of the ball. With some penalties stalling some promising drives, a shanked punt in the first half setting up an easy score, and the Saints putting together a late score to close the gap — yes, what looked like was going to be FUMA rout turned instead into just a solid win. But with the 26-14 win at home, the Blue Devils second straight victory in as many weeks, it was a meaningful Friday afternoon as they improved to .500 on the season.
“Glad that we won but we have to clean some things up,” said Blue Devils coach Brian Hurlocker. “When we get ahead we need to stay ahead. We made too many mistakes today on special teams, offense and defense. St. Chris is a great team and you can’t make those kind of mistakes and consistently win. So we need to fix that.”
It was a sloppy first half to say the least, but a quick one as well. Fork Union got out to an early lead with Taurus Carroll hauling in a screen pass from Chris Basso for a 17-yard touchdown with 4:52 left in the first quarter.
But that’s when things got a bit weird. After a penalties drove FUMA back in its own end the next possession, a shanked punt gave St. Chrisopher’s the ball in the red zone. In the opening moments of the second quarter the Saints turned that into points with Justin Jasper hauling in a 3-yard TD on a perfectly execute fade pass from quarterback Jeb Besmiss.
“The front was good but we need to clean up the back end, because if we keep like we are it’s going to hurt us in the end,” Hurlocker said.
In the waining minutes of the second quarter though, Fork Union captured the momentum. After Adisa Gidden-Smith broke lose for a 46-yard run, the first of two on the day, Iosefa Puaaulli punched in a 5-yard run to make it 14-7 with 40 seconds until the break.
“We did a few things a little different to get a chance in the run game to get us to be able to pass the ball more than we have so far,” Hurlocker said.
Things were quiet until late in the third until Gidden-Smith capped a drive with a 7-yard run and made it 20-7.
“Running up the A-gap was working best,” Gidden-Smith said. “We were just running and finding the blockers, hitting the hole. The offensive line was doing the job.”
The brightest part of the day by far though was FUMA’s defensive front which held the Saints to next to nothing on the ground with defensive lineman Josh Nevers leading the charge for a unit that was missing standout linebacker Adam Hackenberg because of injury.
“We were out there playing as a team, we have a mission,” Nevers said. “When we watched the film we knew if we could get up on (the offensive line) they’d fall back so that’s what we went out to try and do. (This win) means a lot and hopefully we can stay on this train and keep it going.”
Midway through the fourth quarter, St. Chris found a way to make it a game when they capped a drive with 6:03 on a short rush to cut it to 20-14. Fork Union responded though.
With the Blue Devils looking for first downs to melt away the clock, Gidden-Smith broke off a 50-yard run where he dragged a would be tackler for almost 25-yards.
“I saw the one hot safety and I was determined,” Gidden-Smith said. “He was trying to strip the ball and I just couldn’t lose there. I was just trying to score.”
That set up a QB-keeper for Basso to make it 26-14 with 2:52 to play. Then Gidden-Smith capped his big day with an interception on the ensuing drive to seal the win.
“It’s awesome to win back-to-back games and this is a tough schedule,” Hurlocker said. “Nothing is easy and we’ve got LCA and then Collegiate. There are no gimmes in here.”
Fork Union (3-3, 1-0 Prep League) heads to Liberty Christian on Friday at 7:30 p.m.
