Blackhawks drop season opener at Colville

For the first game of the season, Cheney High School football head coach Bobby Byrd doesn’t think his Blackhawks did all that bad.

Cheney played well defensively but couldn’t get rolling on the offensive side of the ball in a 12-10 non-league loss on the road at Colville last Friday. The Indians, who dropped down from the 2A Great Northern League to the Northeast A League this season, used tight splits and a ball-control rushing attack to control the clock and limit Cheney’s offensive possessions.

“Colville had a game plan, and they executed it well,” Byrd said.

Things started pretty well for the Blackhawks. After Colville took an early 6-0 lead, Cheney answered by capping a drive with a screen pass from quarterback Josh Martin to running back Austin Kline, catching the Indians’ defense unprepared for a 33-yard touchdown and a 7-6 lead.

Colville answered with Colton Vining’s 2-yard TD run in the second, and from there on out both defenses took control of the game. The only other score came in the third quarter on Tad Tinker’s 38-yard field goal that pulled Cheney within two at 12-10.

Byrd said the offense looked good on their first score, but after that they couldn’t get any rhythm, with a couple promising offensive possessions thwarted by a pair of Colville interceptions.

No Cheney statistics were available at press time. Byrd said that both Kline and Martin played well, as did senior defensive end Keenan Williams, who often exploded into the Indians’ backfield, disrupting plays.

Byrd also said Cheney’s young linebacker corps “learned a lot” from playing against Colville’s offense, which uses a lot of misdirection. The Blackhawks showed improvement after their first time “seeing live bullets,” Byrd said Sunday evening.

The Blackhawks continue their non-league schedule this Friday with a road trip to face another former-GNL opponent now playing in the NEA — Deer Park. The Stags dropped their season-opener on the road at GNL East Valley last Friday as the Knights rallied with 13 fourth-quarter points for the 27-20 win.

Cheney toughed out a 28-14 win over Deer Park last season, and will face a pretty experienced squad that Byrd thinks should challenge, along with Colville, for an NEA playoff spot. To be successful, the Blackhawks will need to contain quarterback Nic Clough and running back Theron Taylor, both of whom rushed for scores and accounted for all of the Stags scoring at East Valley. Clough also tossed a pair of touchdown passes in the Cheney game last season.

Byrd said the Blackhawks aren’t taking Deer Park lightly. The Stags will present a challenge and a chance to improve upon areas of weakness identified in the Colville game.

“We don’t have a mindset that just because they dropped down that they are a lesser of a team,” Byrd said. “With us, we’ve just got to get back to fundamentals, focus on the little things and be disciplined. We need to improve on what we’re doing.”

Friday’s game is the second of five straight road games for Cheney. The Blackhawks won’t get their first taste of home cooking until Oct. 10 when they host Moscow in a non-league game at Tom Oswald Field.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].