The Sapulpa Chieftains crushed the Hale Rangers 56-0 in a special Thursday edition of High School football at home. The first half was full of strange and crazy plays.
Bryson Williams started as quarterback again and led his Chieftain teammates to decimate Hale’s defense. Marco Smith started in place of Tyreese Jones, and he came to play. After Hale tried an odd onside kick, giving Sapulpa incredible field position, it took three plays until Smith ran it 25 yards untouched for the first score of the game. The point after was good and Sapulpa led 7-0 with just 31 seconds ticked off the clock.
The offense wouldn’t show up again for a while after Sapulpa managed to score back-to-back touchdowns following consecutive blocked punts. The offense finally made its way back out after Hale managed to punt the ball, and in three more plays, Smith was able to cut to the sideline and ran it 40 yards into the endzone, after steam rolling over a Ranger defender five yards before the pylons.
The Chieftains defense showed they can dominate on the other side of the ball by keeping the Hale Rangers in negative yards for the entire first half. Hale had more penalty yards in the first half than positive yards. Several sacks also kept the Rangers from having easy third down situations, and Sapulpa’s defensive backs blitzed quite a bit for the first half, almost scoring a safety and causing Hale to have to punt from the half-yard line.
The Chieftains were up 28 to nothing at the end of the first quarter. The half would still bring the strange and peculiar with the Chieftains’ next possession. Williams kept the ball on a fourth and four attempt and looked like he was going to run out of bounds when he was hit, but a Hale defender caused him to stagger back. In the confusion, all the players behaved as though the play were dead, thinking the quarterback had stepped out of bounds, but Williams then ran it the rest of the way untouched to the surprise of the Rangers defense, for another score.
Sapulpa then faked a QB keeper only to throw it to a wide open Ethan Peterson in the endzone.
During the next possession, the Chieftains found themselves, for the first time in the game, on the other side of the 50-yard line after their first penalty of the night. Smith was not fazed and went off the Chieftains’ center and juked to the sideline, taking the rock 60 yards to make it a 49-0 Sapulpa lead.
During Sapupa’s last possession, Cameran Mackey, substituting for Smith, took the ball and ran it up the sideline, looking like he was going to be stopped by four Rangers, but decided to drag them the last few yards and broke into the endzone.
Sapulpa was up 56-0 at the end of the half with Hale only able to break the 50 yard line once in the final minutes of the second quarter.
The second half was less exciting, but Sapulpa’s defense put on a show. Hale was finally able to get some consistent positive yards, even getting near the red zone on a couple occasions, but a combination of Hale penalties and Sapulpa’s swarming defense would put the Rangers in third and long situations. The Rangers turned it over on downs for all their second half possessions. Sapulpa’s punt team got a little practice for the second half after not getting any field time for the first.
The shutout victory brought the Chieftains’ record to 4-3 and 2-2 in conference play. They will need to keep the momentum going into a tough fight with Pryor on their turf next Friday.
The Hale Rangers remain winless this season and look to host the Claremore Zebras next week who are 1-5 for the season.
