Heverly leads offensive effort
By John Lipez
SUNBURY, Pa. – It wasn’t a win Friday night, but the Central Mountain football team put up its best performance in several weeks in hanging in with a resurgent Shikellamy program. The Braves won the contest by a 35-22 score, but the Wildcats made the home team earn every yard and every point.
Shik, now 5-1, scored the first two times it had the ball, opening a 14-0 first-quarter lead, raising concerns among Wildcat fans it was going to be another long night for their team which had been shutout the previous two Friday nights by a combined 99-0.
But Central Mountain unveiled some new offensive wrinkles that paid off as the game unfolded. Junior quarterback Kyle Everett returned from injury and rushed for 74 yards and a touchdown, and it was again speedster Gavin Heverly who made the big plays, whether running, receiving or, his specialty, returning kickoffs.
The Wildcats got their first score in period two, a 55-yard drive capped off by Everett’s 3-yard touchdown run. The extra point try was no good and the halftime score 14-6.
Shik received the second-half kickoff and speedster Thomas Pollock burst 55 yards on the first play from scrimmage in period three, the extra point putting the home team up 21-6. The Braves stretched the lead to 28-6 on their next possession, Pollock going in from a yard out to end a 33-yard drive after a short CM punt.
Then the senior Heverly made things interesting. He took the kickoff 87 yards for a touchdown and ran in a 2-point conversion to make it 28-14. The Braves came back with a 75-yard drive to all but ice the game, the score a 35-yard pass from their sophomore quarterback Bobby Felmy to Pollock, the latter’s third TD.
Heverly would answer back one more time, taking the kickoff to Shik’s 47-yard line; he would later score from 15 yards out and run in another 2-point conversion to make the score 35-22. Shikellamy got the ball back and was able to run out the game’s last five minutes, although they lost Pollack to injury during that sequence.
The Braves had success running against Central Mountain, totaling 333 yards, 207 on the ground with Felmy passing for 126 yards. Central Mountain, which struggled for positive yardage in their two previous losses, picked up 176 yards from the line of scrimmage. Heverly had 48 of those in five carries; he also caught one pass for 27 yards.
Wildcat coach Travis Thompson on Heverly: “Gavin, I can’t say enough about him. Here’s a kid who wants the ball, he’s driven. Sometimes we have to calm him down a little bit and say, “Hey, this one doesn’t go to you.” But he’s definitely a gamer. He’s a guy teams have to prepare for; you can see what they do. Every time you kick the ball to him, he’s dangerous, so we try to get the ball to him as much as possible.”
Overall, coach Thompson liked what he saw. “I’m proud of how the kids played. They handled some adversity early on. You know, we came in with a game plan. I thought we were able to execute better offensively, move the ball with our run game, and we got some passes going early. So I think that’s just a testament to what the kids have been doing every week. Like I’ve always said, these kids work; they don’t give up on themselves, they don’t give up on their team. So it’s a great group of kids.”
Shikellamy had dropped 56 points on Jersey Shore in the Braves’ 56-27 win over the Bulldogs last week. Given that, coach Thompson complimented his defense, “For sure…I’m really happy with how our line played. I thought we got good pressure. I thought our linebackers did well. I thought our secondary played phenomenal. This is a team that throws the ball about 60% of the time, and we took most of it right out of the game. Pollock, their number one receiver, only had a couple catches tonight. Outside of where he ran the ball there in the second half—they moved him back into the backfield to get him some touches because they weren’t able to do it through the pass game. So, very proud of how we played defensively and how the kids stuck to the game plan and were really able to take some things out.”
Central Mountain drops to 0-6 with the loss and will return home next Friday to greet Mifflinburg. That Wildcat team moved to 4-2 on the year after downing Warrior Run by a 51-6 score on Friday.
CM 0 6 8 8 = 22
S 14 0 14 7 = 35
