Ooltewah Owls smother rival East Hamilton Hurricanes

photo East Hamilton's Kendall Henderson (#14) gains yardage against Ooltewah.

Ooltewah's streak of consecutive quarters without allowing a score came to an end at nine Friday night before a record-breaking crowd at District 5-AAA neighbor and rival East Hamilton.

Yet, as the Hurricanes experienced, the Owls' defensive dominance continued in a suffocating performance that included two pick-six returns in a 41-7 victory.

The end of the scoreless streak, which featured back-to-back shutouts by the Owls and a scoreless first quarter on Friday, actually inspired Ooltewah's defense to reach new levels of intensity.

In the East Hamilton series immediately following David Whiteside's 6-yard TD run that capped an 18-play, 80-yard drive to tie the game at 7 with 7:00 left in the first half, the Owls registered three straight turnovers, including interception TD returns by Adrian Hall (40 yards) and Rashun Freeman (38 yards). In between those dashes, Ooltewah converted a fumble recovery deep in Hurricanes territory into the first of Laslo Toser's two field goals.

"We knew we needed to step up to the challenge," Hall said of the defense's reaction to the tying score. "We got together and told each other we weren't going to let that happen again."

The Owls more than lived up to their word, and the Hurricanes continued to have difficulty with ball security. After containing East Hamilton to 44 yards of total offense in the first half, the Owls forced turnovers on the Hurricanes' first two possessions of the second half and six turnovers in eight possessions to that point in the game.

Edward Hayes, on a 4-yard run and a 9-yard reception from Kelvin Leon, gave the Owls defense more than enough of an advantage.

"You can't have as many turnovers as we had tonight and we've had this season and expect good things to happen," said East Hamilton coach Ted Gatewood. "You can't give the Little Sisters of the Poor eight turnovers and not get your teeth absolutely kicked in. And you give a good football team that many turnovers and you get the result we got. Early on, we saw glimpses tonight, but we have to do a better job with ball security."

"The defense really stepped up again tonight," said Ooltewah coach Mac Bryan. "Any time you force that many turnovers you have a good chance to be successful. We got those pick-sixes and I thought our offense was pretty good tonight, even though we hurt ourselves with some penalties.

"Our defense has been something so far this season. They have been able to run things down and control the game. They are very difficult to drive the ball against."

For the game, Ooltewah (5-0, 2-0) held East Hamilton (1-4, 1-1) to under 150 yards of total offense, while the Owls registered over 300 yards.

The Hurricanes, with heavy graduation losses from the team that topped the Owls in last year's state quarterfinals last year, came close to cracking the end zone in the fourth quarter. Tracy Thompson hauled in a 40-yard pass from Caleb Rhodes to set up the Hurricanes inside the Owls' 5, but the defense kept East Hamilton out of the end zone on four straight tries.

"They were not going to score again," Hall said.

Contact Greg Thompson at sports@timesfreepress.com

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