Owen stumbles in season opener

Chase offense overpowers Warhorses at home

Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
August 28, 2021

There was an air of excitement in Warhorse Stadium, Aug. 27, when the Owen football team took the field to open its 2021 season.

The visiting Chase Trojans, however, had plans to spoil the occasion.

It took less than 15 seconds for junior Taivon Derisma to field the opening kickoff, find room and score the first touchdown for the Trojans, who improved to 2-0 on the season with a 56-6 victory over the 0-1 Warhorses. Chase would add six more touchdowns in the first half, including two from junior Marqies Mccomb, to secure a 48-0 lead heading into the half.

The Trojans would score again in the third quarter before Owen junior Kameron Moore, who led the team with 84 rushing yards, scored the lone touchdown for the home team in the final minutes of the contest. It wasn’t the kind of homecoming first-year Warhorse head coach Brint Russell was hoping for.

“They’re a really good team,” said Russell, who took over the Owen football program in June. “They have several kids on that roster who are going to play college football, and we knew this would be a big challenge going in.”

Containing Mccombs, who has rushed for 468 yards and 7 touchdowns in the first two games of the season, proved to be an insurmountable challenge for the Warhorses.

“We didn’t do a good job wrapping up on defense,” Russell said after the game. “We also didn’t do a good job maintaining our blocks on offense, and we were sloppy with the ball. We had five fumbles and lost two of them, and any time you’re playing triple option, you’re not going to win football games like that.”

The coach called the loss a “learning experience” for his team.

“As a team, we have 48 hours to flush this game and move on,” he said. “Then, we’ll come back in here on Monday, look at the film and fix the things we did wrong. We can’t let this loss cause us to have another one”

Owen will attempt to get on track, Friday, Sept. 3, when they travel to Ablemarle to face the 0-2 Bulldogs.

“We have to concentrate on a long three-hour bus ride next week, and be more competitive than we showed tonight,” Russell said.

One of the ways the coaching staff will help prepare their team for Albemarle involves building upon the strengths they identified in the game against Chase.

“I felt really good about Kam Moore,” Russell said. “He did a really good job of running the football in the fourth quarter and I was really proud of the way he played. We also saw some tremendous leadership from our team captains, even though some of them were playing a little banged up. You can always build off toughness like that.”

Photos of Owen’s 2021 season opener can be found in the gallery at the top of the page.