CARROLLTON - The Carrollton Hawks did something they haven’t done since the 1996 season and it’s anything, but happy. With an off-season filled with great hope and promise, the Hawks are off to an 0-3 start with a 44-32 loss to their longtime rivals, the Greenfield-Northwestern Tigers 44-32, in Greenfield on Friday night.
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“There’s a lot of parity in the conference and this is a rough start for us.” Carrollton head coach Nick Flowers said. “I told the team that there’s probably going to be worse things that will happen to some of us in our life, but this is not a good start to the season.”
Carrollton has faced the top level of WIVC competition. Their first three opponents, Brown County, Payson-Unity, and Greenfield are a combined 8-1, however, just about everyone invested wouldn’t have pegged the Hawks start out with not even a victory.
The story of the game was the Tigers overwhelming the Hawks in the running department.
“They shredded us,” Flowers said. “They ran the ball at will against us and they had a good plan. We were loading the box and they were still gaining yards on us.”
Greenfield racked up 420 yards on the ground and fullback Jacob Foiles scored four touchdowns.
Wade Prough opened the scoring with a four-yard scramble for touchdown to put the Hawks up on their first possession.
After a 30-plus minute lightning delay, with under three minutes to play in the first quarter, Prough threw a 28-yard touchdown to Alex Bowker to give Carrollton an early 14-0 lead with everything going their way.
Prough would finished with 305 passing yards and four touchdowns.
“Any time you get up 14-0 you got to keep a lead and win ball games,” Flowers said. “We gave up too many yards and we’re not playing hard-nosed Hawk defense right now.”
The Hawks got the ball back again and had a fourth down near midfield, but decided to fake their punt. Jerrett Smith’s pass was just out of the reach for a diving Alex Bowker to corral the ball in the red zone.
Greenfield got good field position and took advantage.
Jacob Foiles capped a five-minute, 18-second drive with a six-yard rushing touchdown to get the Tigers back into the game.
Later in the quarter, Cody Brown scored on a one-play, 80-yard drive on a jet-sweep.
The Tigers took the lead on the two-point conversion and had at halftime.
Both teams traded blows in the third quarter.
After recovery a fumble at the Tiger 11-yard line, Prough hit Watson again in the end zone on an 8-yard strike to get the lead back to 20-16.
Greenfield scored on one play again as Klinton Roth ran it in from 13 yards out.
Keith Elliott set up the the great field position with a long kick return.
During the ensuing possession, on a third down and 16 for Carrollton, Jerrett Smith caught a pass from and trucked a defender to get a first down, but he didn’t stop there.
He broke three more tackles and eventually ended up in the end zone for a beast mode level touchdown that catapulted the Hawks back into the lead at 26-24.
The Tigers marched back quickly, as they did for the entire second half, and Foiles capped the drive with his third touchdown on a 7-yard run to give Greenfield the lead for good just before the quarter ended.
With 9:28 to go in the game, Foiles broke off a 75-yard touchdown run to give his team insurance.
After stopping a quick Carrollton attack, Greenfield ran over six minutes off the clock to eventually score with under two minutes to go and put the cherry on the icing and it was Foiles once again.
“We’re not quitters and we’re going to re-group,” Flowers said. “We’re going to do a little soul searching this week. This is pretty unfortunate, but it’s not over till it’s over.”
