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Area roundup: Clovis Christian topples Elida

CLOVIS - Elida has been successful after restarting its football program three years ago, earning trips to the state 6-man finals each of the past two seasons.

Meantime, Clovis Christian made its return to the sport on Saturday after a five-year hiatus and served notice it might be a team to be reckoned with, posting a season-opening 22-12 victory over the Tigers at Jim Hill Field.

Junior running back Noah Ashford rambled for 155 yards and a touchdown while senior Kane Duong added a pair of TD runs for CCS.

Coach Kenny Duong, a member of the Eagles' 2010 state 8-man championship team, said it was a great way to get the campaign going.

"When I was playing, defense is what we preached all the time," he said. "That's what we did in that championship season in 2010."

A failed fake punt on Elida's opening possession quickly turned into eight points for the Eagles, with Ashford's 17-yard run and Santi Garbarino's 2-point conversion kick capping the four-play, 27-yard march.

Sophomore quarterback Levi Victor led the Tigers back on a nine-play, 65-yard drive, capping it with an 11-yard TD toss to junior Jesse Woodruff late in the period. But Elida got little going on offense after that until sophomore running back Mason Pritchett broke a 65-yard TD jaunt in the final minute.

"It wasn't exactly how we wanted (the season) to start, but we've got a really young team," Tigers coach Jereme Woodruff said. "We had to replace a load of talent from last year."

Kane Duong, who is coach Duong's brother, gave the Eagles some breathing room with scoring runs of 1 yard in the second quarter and 33 yards in the third.

"We knew we had some size on our team, but we've got some speed too," coach Duong said. "We wanted to make them tackle our big guys (Ashford and Kane Duong), and that's hard to do on every single play.

"It was a battle of endurance; we both have a lot of guys playing both ways. It was a matter of who was in better shape."

In the end, CCS won the game somewhat handily despite mustering only five first downs.

"It was a pretty good first game," Ashford said. "We had a lot of mistakes, but what can you do? But we won and we had a great time."

He said the Eagles are trying to simply take each game as it comes in a four-game season.

"I think we did really good," Ashford said. "We messed up on a few things, but we'll fix that and be ready for next week (a home game against Dora).

"Our goal is to win every single game."

For Elida, Pritchett's late long run pushed his total for the contest to 158 yards on 16 carries.

Coach Woodruff said his squad wasn't at all sure they'd have a season.

"We had been kind of planning to play in the fall," he said. "We were prepared to play, but we were kind of tentative.

"Clovis Christian has a good group of guys. They played good, hard-nosed football, and they're classy kids."

Still, it was a bit of a rough pill to swallow for a team which has enjoyed early success in the program and suffered just three losses before Saturday, including two in the state finals.

"Out of three years with the program, to only have four losses, I'm pretty proud of that," coach Woodruff said.

Other area games - Elsewhere in the area on Saturday, Floyd and Dora were both thumped at home, the Broncos losing to much-improved Lake Arthur 59-10 while the Coyotes were blanked 50-0 by Gateway Christian.

First-year Floyd coach Gabe Montoya said his team gave a good effort, but couldn't keep up with Lake Arthur. The Panthers, who returned the opening kickoff for a score, led 20-10 at the half before scoring 39 unanswered points the rest of the way.

"We played good, but we have just seven players, including a couple of eighth-graders," Montoya said. "Defensively, we recovered three fumbles, but we couldn't take advantage of it."

Floyd pulled to 8-6 after the opening return, scoring on a 60-yard pass from Gabriel Love to Juan Albertran on its first play from scrimmage. The Broncos added a four-point, 30-yard field goal from Love right before halftime.

 
 
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