BROOKVILLE — Adam Hall knew his team faced a stiff challenge to open the high school football season against Brookville.
Hall, now in his second season at Tri-County North, saw his team battle early but couldn’t overcome five turnovers and less than 100 yards of offense in suffering a 49-0 setback on Friday, Aug. 20 in the season-opener for both teams.
The game was played with running clock the entire second half as the host Blue Devils built a 35-0 halftime lead.
“You got to give credit to Brookville. We knew coming in they’re a good football team and they showed that tonight,” Hall said.
Brookville scored on a 48-yard run by Tim Davis with 9:43 left in the first quarter.
On North’s first possession, the Panthers drove to the Brookville 23 before fumbling the ball away.
Brookville capitalized with another Davis touchdown run, this time from 36 yards out, for a 14-0 lead with 1:04 to play in the first.
North committed turnover number two when it fumbled away the ensuing kickoff and Brookville made them pay.
One play later, Blue Devil quarterback Keegan Mehr connected with Dylan Starnes for a 16-yard touchdown pass and a 21-0 lead.
Davis added his third touchdown run with 3:44 to play in the second quarter, on a 26-yard run, for a 28-0 lead.
Another North turnover lead to a second Mehr to Starnes touchdown pass, this time from 5-yards out, with 2:02 left in the half for a 35-0 lead.
“We started out, we made some good plays early on and we did some good things, we just made mistakes that we can’t make to win a football game,” Hall said. “But we got a young team and we’re gonna come back and keep going.”
The Blue Devils added another score in the third quarter and one in the fourth for the final margin.
The Panthers finished the game with 90 yards of total offense.
Logan Flory was 3-of-5 passing for 38 yards and carried the ball seven times for 27 yards.
“I told the guys that we got a way that we expect to play, and we want to do that the whole way through, so when something bad happens, we got to keep going. Something bad’s gonna happen, it’s football,” Hall said. “And we did, at times, we bounced back all right and now times we didn’t do what we needed to do.”
North (0-1) will play its first Western Ohio Athletic Conference game this Friday, Aug. 27, when it travels to National Trail (0-1), who lost 51-0 at Milton-Union last week.
