The Longhorns of Johnson County Middle School unleashed a stampede on the Jr. Rangers of Unaka Middle School Tuesday night running roughshod on Stoney Creek all night long.

Starting with their opening possession of the game, the Longhorns scored every time they touched the ball in the first half of play with the exception of their final drive in the second quarter.

Unaka’s only scoring drive came late in the fourth quarter.

Playing a hurry-up offense, the Rangers kicked it into high gear after receiving the kickoff from the Longhorns at the 31-yard line.

The seven-play scoring drive was a mixture of pass and run that had the Longhorns on their heels. The drive culminated in a short pass over the middle that Brennon Repass took 37 yards to the house.

Jr. Ranger head coach Daniel McInturff speaking after the game said about the Rangers last drive, “ Anybody in our league knows that we like to go fast – we can do it but when you try to do that the whole ball game it’s like running a full-court press in basketball for the entire game.

“We can do it, but you have to be in shape and you got to have subs, but right now we just don’t have that. When we can do that we are pretty decent, we’ve pretty good and we’re working on doing that.”

Unaka didn’t help themselves much turning the ball over on either a fumble or interception four times over the course of the game.

McInturff said after the game that his team would continue to work on the fundamentals of the game.

“You know, we’ve got a bunch of young kids, kids who played in the very first game they’d ever played in last Thursday night. So this is all a work in progress. I don’t care about the scoreboard,” stated McInturff.

“I told these kids that I want to win just as much as anybody out there but we have got to get better, we’ve got to get more fundamentally better so when we send these kids on to high school, they can step in so they can contribute.

“That’s our job, we’ve just got a lot of kids that are just raw. So it’s our job to teach them and that’s what we’re trying to do. From last Thursday to tonight we’ve gotten better and that’s what we have got to continue to do.”

McInturff continued, “We’ve got Chucky Doak next week and we’ve just got to keep working on being physical- continuing to work on trying to be more physical than everybody else. We’ve got to keep grinding on fundamentals, catching the football, throwing the football, tackling, the basic’s of football.

“Not having the youth football has really kind of hurt us but coach (Unaka High head coach) Bennett is doing a good job of getting that back for us. I’m hoping that in the next year we can benefit from it but right now we’re hurting from it so we’re having to build these kids from the ground up.”