The Craig County Rockets made their home debut on a rainy night in New Castle last Friday but couldn’t get on the scoreboard. Craig dropped a 29-0 decision to visiting Auburn.
“They were a little bigger and a little stronger than we were,” said Craig coach Mark Harrison. “And we made some mistakes that hurt us. They had some big plays.”
Dakota Henderson led the Rockets with 109 yards of total offense. He rushed for a team leading 66 yards and hit Matt Huffman twice with passes for 43 more yards.
The rest of the rushing yardage was split up between four boys. Dalton McPherson had 38 yards rushing, Kyle Sloss had 35, Jacob Bradford had 21 and Ben Deplazes had 20 yards rushing.
On defense Sloss led the Rockets with 10 tackles. McPherson, Bradford and Dakota Henderson had eight each while Huffman had six and Deplazes had five.
This Friday the Rockets are back on the road for a game at Nelson County. The Governors are a Group 2A school in the Dogwood District, led by first year coach Matthew Hicks. Nelson has started off 1-1 with a win over Bath County.
“We can play with them if we have a good week of practice,” said Harrison. “We can get a victory if we do the right things.”
Harrison plans on tweaking the offense after seeing his young line struggle for the first two weeks.
“I think we’re going to have to open it up a little,” he said. “I didn’t want to do this just yet but I don’t think I have a choice. We need to be stronger up front.”