WS Chronicle

Quality Education Academy (QEA) suffered a tough loss in their first ever football game in the schools’ history.  North Wake jumped all over QEA early and often to earn the 68-0 victory at Lash stadium last Saturday night, Aug. 25.

The Saints came into the game with one thing on their minds: running the football.  North Wake suffocated the Pharaohs with their run game.  They did not throw a pass until late in the fourth quarter, when the game was already out of reach.

North Wake used the run to gain a 30-0 lead by the time the first quarter was over.  OEA was out-gunned in the trenches, which opened up sizeable running lanes for the Saints’ backs.  The Saints defense was not too shabby as well, holding QEA to continuous three and outs, leading to short fields for their offense.

The onslaught continued in the second quarter, as the Saints did not let up in their pursuit of victory.  Still using the running game, they continued to ground and pound the Pharaohs’ front seven.  On offense, the Pharaohs could not get anything going against the Saints’ relentless attack.  By halftime, the score was 58-0.

QEA went into the game with several young men in the seventh and eighth grades.  Head coach Antonio Stevenson said he was proud of the effort his young men gave in the first half by not giving up.

“We got a lot of work to do, but I have a lot of young guys playing against 17 and 18 year olds,” said Stevenson.  “The one thing we told them at halftime was not to get down on themselves and don’t quit.  It’s easy to just give up when you look at the scoreboard, but we told them to not look at the scoreboard and continue to play hard.”

The Saints’ game plan was to come in and control the game on the ground.  Head coach John Dorsey said they like to control the pace of the game, using the running game early and often.

“That’s what we typically do. We are a running team,” said Dorsey.  “We didn’t know what to expect because we didn’t have any film or any information on them, being it was their first game. 

The Pharaohs seemed to settle down on defense coming out in the third quarter.  They held the Saints to only one score.  On offense, however, they could not sustain any drives that could muster any points against North Wake.

The Saints continued to stick with their bread and butter in the fourth by keeping the ball on the ground.  Down the stretch, the Pharaohs tried their best to put points on the board but the Saints held tough, preserving the shutout.

“I knew it wasn’t going to be great, but I didn’t think we would not score at all, so we got some work to do,” Stevenson said.  “My guys didn’t quit, but we did have some mental lapses.”

“We had some touchdowns, we just didn’t score them on the board.  We had some touchdowns on the sidelines because we had some young guys that didn’t quit. We had some older guys saying not to give up because we have to score a touchdown for coach.”

Stevenson says he has never been on this end of such a lopsided loss.  He feels his team can learn from this game and has nowhere to go but up from here.

Dorsey says his team has some things to clean up heading into their next game.  He says this is the best defense he has had since he began coaching North Wake. Defensive coordinator Lamar Evans says he knew the defense would be good based on what they had coming back from last year.