TURNER — Leavitt’s Calder twins were double trouble for York on Friday night.
Damion Calder ran 76 yards for a touchdown on Leavitt’s second play of the game, then brother Dasean ran 60 yards to paydirt to start the second half as the Hornets sped their way to a 36-12 victory over the Wildcats in a Class C South football showdown at Libby Field.
Dasean Calder ran for 192 yards and two touchdowns on 12 carries, while Damion added 109 yards on five carries. The Hornets (4-0) compiled 466 rushing yards as a team.
“I’ve been coaching them guys since they were like 8, and they’ve been running jet sweeps since then, so it’s nice having both of those guys. They’re fast, but they’re also tough,” Leavitt coach Mike Hathaway said. “And you take those two with (Mark) Herman and (Allen) Peabody and Wyatt (Hathaway) and (Garrett) Jabbusch and Cam (Jordan), you can’t really load up on anything.
“It’s nice to have a slew of guys back there.”
The Wildcats (3-1) had two chances at the game’s first score after the Hornets fumbled and lost a punt after forcing York to a quick three-and-out to start the game. The Wildcats got the ball down to the Leavitt 6-yard line but settled for a field-goal attempt, which Jordan blocked.
“We thought that jumping on them early like that, after they make a mistake on the punt — that was a big play — and we tried to come out of it with three (points) after we had a penalty of our own on the goal line,” York coach Matt Nelson said. “We have to go back and eliminate our mistakes, and maybe that’s a different game going into the second quarter.”
Dasean Calder then ran for 12 yards, and after a holding penalty pushed the Hornets back to their own 24-yard line, Damion Calder ran a sweep to the left before eventually speeding diagonally toward the right side of the end zone.
“They’re very fast, and what they do on offense they do very well,” Nelson said. “(Damion Calder) is a dynamic player, and that sweep that they have, that’s their bread and butter and they do it really, really well.”
Despite racking up 283 yards rushing in the first half, the Hornets had plenty of troubles of their own in the first half. They committed eight penalties for 70 yards and Wyatt Hathaway was picked off twice, though he did run in for a touchdown from 2 yards out in the second quarter to make it 16-0.
That lead grew to 24-0 when Dasean Calder ran through the York defense to open the second half.
“That was big. We talked at halftime about coming out and striking fast,” Mike Hathaway said. “They were leaning pretty heavy on our jet motion, so we caught them back on the weak side. It’s a good call and the line blocked it real well.”
“You never want to give it up,” Nelson said. “We wanted to come out and make a stop, but that’s a killer. That’s a hard thing to bounce back from, especially when you’re trying to climb back into the game.”
Dasean Calder added a 14-yard touchdown run to make it 30-0 before York quarterback Teagan Hynes threw touchdown passes to Noah Caramihalis (45 yards) and Evan Bourgoine (36 yards) to cut Leavitt’s lead to 30-12 in the final minute of the third quarter.
Peabody added a touchdown run for Leavitt in the fourth quarter.
Hynes was 16-of-32 passing for 201 yards, but he was picked off midway through the fourth. The Wildcats were held to only 58 yards rushing on 19 carries.
“We always want to be balanced. Credit to their defensive line, and their outside linebackers are really good on the edge,” Nelson said. “We got to go back, watch the film, and we got to coach better, we got to play better, we got to do everything better.”
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