The outcome of Friday’s season opener for the Bridgeport High School football team at Wayne Jamison Field likely didn’t matter as much as the simple fact a game took place.

 

The final preseason scrimmage, against Keyser, was called off for COVID-related issues. Last week’s scheduled opener at Buckhannon-Upshur was also called off COVID-related issues.

 

The Indians just needed to play somebody. They needed to hit anyone in a different uniform. Of course, a 31-20 victory against Morgantown — the third win in as many years against the Mohigans — certainly felt pretty good too.

 

“The kids were caged animals for sure,” said first-year head coach Tyler Phares. “There’s a lot of stuff we can fix but the kids battled hard and that’s what we cared about the most, we wanted to see good effort and we saw that.”

 

Landyn Reppert paced a balanced BHS offense with career-highs of 19 rushing attempts and 148 rushing yards. He was also one of four different players to reach the end zone as the Tribe finished with 404 yards of total offense.

 

The balance offense wasn’t necessarily a surprise as Phares has talked all offseason about having tons of depth in the backfield for his single-wing attack.

 

The play up front in the trenches was a bit of a question mark with just one returning starter, Tate Jordan, back. Although there are some areas there to work on, overall it was a solid performance from the line.

 

“It was amazing just to play someone,” Jordan said. “We needed this. We were starting to lose hope that we would even have a season and this reminded us that the game is still here.

 

“There were no returning starters on the line out there other than myself. The performance was good for the first game because it broke the ice and made some guys less nervous. Morgantown was a very good test but there is room for improvement.”

 

The first play of the game temporarily halted the BHS excitement as Morgantown’s Bobby Powell returned the opening kickoff 91 yards for a touchdown. Powell actually bobbled the kick and scooped it up as the aggressive BHS coverage unit raced paced the ball. Powell promptly found a seam and a few seconds later the Mohigans had a 7-0 lead.

 

The Indians responded with a 19-play drive that saw five different players carry the ball. Reppert quickly established himself with eight of those carries including a 29-yard run on the first play of scrimmage that was called back on a holding penalty and a 12-yard gain on the next snap.

 

Aidan Paulsen capped the initial drive of the season for the Tribe with a 2-yard TD run, the first carry and first points of his career.

 

Taylor Thomas followed with the first of xx PAT kicks to make it 7-all.

 

Morgantown’s offense had a difficult time moving the ball against a stingy BHS defense as its three first-half possessions resulted in a pair of punts and a turnover on downs.

 

The Mohigans’ biggest first-half play was a pass of 16 yards from sophomore quarterback Maddox Bowers to  Riley Felton.

 

However, any momentum Morgantown might have had was quickly halted when BHS defensive back Derek Starkey came up with a huge open-field tackle on a sweep by Jarrett Lawrence that went for a loss of four.

 

Starkey and Paulsen each made several big plays for the BHS secondary.

 

“Coming into the year we saw a strength of our team being our safeties,” Phares said. “We are a little more athletic back there they we have been. I told them after the game how proud I was of how hard they played. We’ve done some things coverage wise to allow them to come up and play more aggressively and we saw the benefits of that tonight.”

 

Morgantown only had one play the rest of the half go for more than 3 yards after the huge play by Starkey.

 

The Indians took the lead for good with 6:55 left in the second quarter as Cam Cole connected with Nate Lhotsky for a 68-yard touchdown pass. Lhotsky, who has drawn raves all season long with his pass-catching ability, went up in pretty good coverage and snatch the ball away and outraced everybody to the endzone.

 

Lhotsky had another big reception on the Tribe’s final drive of the first half, reeling in one for 43 yards that put the ball inside the 3.

The Indians couldn’t punch it in the rest of the way but Thomas hit a 22-yard field goal as time expired to make it 17-7 at the half.

 

The Mohigans briefly made it a one-possession game following a 37-yard touchdown run from Davon Eldridge in the third quarter.

But again, the BHS defense tightened up and Ty Martin’s 15-yard touchdown run and Reppert’s from 10 yards out, made it 31-14 with less than 5 minutes to play.

 

Sebastian Dalton added a late TD run with less than 30 seconds to play to account for the game’s final points.

 

Eldridge led Morgantown with 71 yards on nine carries. Caleb Nutter, who had more than 150 and three scores in last week’s loss to South Charleston, was held to 50 yards on 16 carries.

 

Martin added 50 yards on six carries for the BHS offense to go along with his TD. Cole had 41 yards on 20 attempts and completed both of his pass attempts (both going to Lhotsky) for 111 yards. Ryan Hall chipped in with 40 rushing yards on seven attempts.

 

The Indians are set to return to action next Friday with a road game against Liberty which fell to 1-1 on Friday after a 30-7 loss to South Harrison. That win for the Hawks marks the first victory as a head coach for former BHS all-state running back Brett Hathaway.

 

Editor's Note: Top photo is of Reppert, second photo shows Zach Rohrig (24) and Aidan Paulsen (11) making a tackle, third shot is of Lhotsky on the way to tne end zone. Fourth photo shows Martin looking for running room and bottom photo features Phares and assistant coach John Cole. Photos courtesy of www.benqueenphotography.com