Football

By Ryan McCabe

New coaches, new players, new look, and a brand new offense. Those are all things that the returning football players are having to adjust to this year. On paper, those changes might sound difficult, but according to the newly elected team captains that’s not the case.

Seniors Justin Underwood and Eric Rogers and junior Justice Merz were elected by the whole team as captains.

According to Underwood, “The biggest thing is that they [the practices] go a lot faster, and we keep a good rhythm going to get done faster; they are also very organized.”

The team is doing a pretty good job of picking up the new style of offense because the Cardinals are 2-0 after two very exciting games against Piper and Louisburg. They were not the highest scoring games ever. However, both games were won by just a single digit, and they came down to the wire.

The Cardinals had their home opener on Friday, Sept. 13 against Louisburg and again just like the game against Piper it came down to the final seconds. One of the offensive standouts was senior Andrew Ballock. Ballock was the only one to score for the Cardinals and had the most important TD of the game to make the score 14-15 late in the fourth quarter. Although Ballock scored the TD he had some help getting down the field from freshman Mitchell Ballock, who had a crucial catch to set up the winning TD. Andrew gave the Cardinals the lead for good when he ran in for the 2 point conversion to make the score 16-15.

The Cardinals travelled to DeSoto on Friday, Sept. 20 and came out with a hard-fought victory.  The game down to a 4th quarter touchdown from Andrew Ballock, who ran for the winning score.  Their defense also stepped up and held DeSoto scoreless.

EHS will face Paola at home on Friday, Sept. 27.