What We Saw: Clover 37, York 6

Brandon Stockdale September 13, 2024 @ 11:36 PM

YORK | Clover wanted to come out and play with effort, toughness and discipline.   And they picked a great night to do it against their cross town rival York, as they smothered the Cougars, 37-6 on Friday night.   “All three phases came out and played a physical game of football. Mistakes are going to happen here and we had a few, but we cleaned up a lot we've had over the last three weeks and finally played right before we went into region: A complete game,” Clover head coach Perry Woolbright said.   The Blue Eagles came out on the opening series and hit Jayden Henry for a first down on 3rd down from Brody Woolbright. That led to a [player_tooltip player_id='1603816' first='Grady' last='Stone'] touchdown run from 5 yards out as the Blue Eagles drew first blood with 7:53 left in the first quarter.   The Blue Eagles got after [player_tooltip player_id='1592333' first='Tayshon' last='Freeman'] early and often with back-to-back sacks, part of an eight sack night as [player_tooltip player_id='1743683' first='Carson' last='Pinti'], [player_tooltip player_id='995603' first='Brody' last='Rowan'] and [player_tooltip player_id='1404968' first='Jackson' last='Hill'] were in the backfield throughout the evening.   The connection between Woolbright and Henry was active as the duo connected for a long touchdown reception over the middle to go up 14-0 with 1:24 to play in the first quarter.    Woolbright was proud of his offense and their ability to not only run the ball, but hit plays in the quick passing game with both Woolbright and [player_tooltip player_id='1407416' first='Aaron' last='Shealey'].   “They've both done a great job. The big thing about both of them is their team players. You don't ever see one pout because the other one is going in. They rotate all week in practice, they rotate in games and stuff like that. Each of them have gone first in two games but they've never said, ‘Oh, why not me? Oh, I don't care and it should be me. They've always put the team first. They help each other out when they're not in the game, they kind of tell each other what they're seeing and they go and play for the team,” Woolbright said.   The best drive of the first half for the Cougars came on a catch and run from Jay McCoy to end the first quarter. But a 35-yard field goal was blocked by Clover with 10:47 to play in the second quarter.   RUN AND RUN SOME MORE   The combination of [player_tooltip player_id='1012627' first='Landon' last='Stone'] (pictured above) and [player_tooltip player_id='1603816' first='Grady' last='Stone'] is proving to be a valuable asset for Clover. The younger brother, Grady had runs of 20 and 5 yards leading to Landon finishing it off with a 1-yard touchdown run to go up 20-0 with 7:45 to play in the first half as the extra point was missed. Both ran hard throughout the evening and are hard to tackle one-on-one in the hole.   Haven Maddox knocked through a 38-yard FG to extend the Blue Eagles' lead to 23-0 at the halftime break.   York would find the end zone on a 55-yard reception from Freeman to McCoy to cut into the Blue Eagles' lead late in the third quarter with 1:32 left. But that's as close as the Cougars would get as Stone would get into the end zone again. Clover's defense capped off the night with a strip sack for a touchdown with 7:30 left in the contest.   “We've got to do a better job coaching. We've got to do a better job playing, in practice. Tonight was just an old fashioned butt kicking, that's all it was,” York coach Dean Boyd said.

YORK | Clover wanted to come out and play with effort, toughness and discipline.