The Gardendale defense digs in for an important play, during Friday night’s game at Hoover. The Rocket defense played well enough to win, but turnovers allowed Hoover to come away with the win.

By Charles Prince

The North Jefferson News



HOOVER —The Gardendale Rockets may have lost their first game in Class 6A Friday night, but with a strong defensive effort and a good start on offense, they showed they belong in the state’s highest classification.

“The first drive couldn’t have been any better,” Gardendale head coach Chris Fancher said. “I take my hat off to the defense again. They played well and we’ll be in games every week with a chance to win, because of how well they’re playing.”

The Rockets defense allowed only 100 first half yards and yielded only 143 total yards.

The longest Hoover scoring drive was only 26 yards. The Bucs scored on a 38-yard fumble return, in addition to 24, 26 and 21-yard drives following turnovers.

The fumble return came after a fumbled snap in a punting situation to tie the game at 7-all. Later, another mistake in the punting game set up the Bucs third score.

The Rockets opened the game with a 14-play, 80-yard drive to jump on top, 7-0.

On third-and-six from the 11-yard line, senior running back Trey Hilliard scored on a draw play.

“The thing we have to learn it not to be a one-hit wonder,” Fancher said. “We can’t be satisfied with just doing well on the first drive. We’ve got to finish the game on offense. We had too many mistakes after that.

“We’ve get the kicking game straightened out and we’ll get better. We were much better tonight than we were last week. But we’ve got to protect the football. They get 27 points on two turnovers and two kicking game mistakes. That was all they got all night.”

The Rockets held the Bucs to only 54 yards on the ground on 29 carries.

The pass rush produced three quarterback sacks, one each by Nick Pogue, Daniel Thomas and Tyrone Bowie. Bowie had a second sack erased by the Rocket coaching staff, when they accepted a penalty against Hoover on the play.

Bowie led all tacklers with 13 stops, nine solo and four assists. Julius Shelton had six solo stops and two assists and Pogue had five solos and three assists.