'Momentum shifter' play to end first half sparks Akron North football in win at St. Thomas Aquinas High School, snapping Vikings' long losing streak.
LOUISVILLE — Friday night was a long time coming for the Akron North Vikings.
A 23-6 Week 1 high school football win over St. Thomas Aquinas at Sirpilla Stadium snapped a 19-game losing streak. It was just the third victory for the Vikings since 2020.
But it wasn’t clear if North head coach DeMonte Powell was taken aback by the number of his team’s recent skid.
“That’s how many it was?” Powell said. “No man, that’s good. We talked about it all year and staying together. We lost 12 kids last year going into this year. This is a very young team. If we can get our butts to practice, this would be even better. But staying together is a big thing. Now that we’ve got one, we can stack some wins.”
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Shortly after the victory, Viking players ran in front of a small gathering in the visiting section. They jumped up and down and clapped twice before yelling “boom.” It was their first victory since a 28-0 rout of Coventry in Week 1 of 2023.
North had its fans jumping with a 16-6 lead at halftime. Junior quarterback Jair Bell connected with receiver Harold Wright for a 46-yard touchdown pass with 10:21 left in the second quarter.
On the final play of the first half, North mishandled the snap on a 27-yard field goal attempt. Senior Nate Ruffin picked the ball up, ran right and reversed field before finding the end zone.
“We needed that,” Powell said. “That was a momentum shifter. I felt that it was kind of the dagger. It’s hard to go down already, but then you give up a touchdown right before halftime. We’ve been on that side before where you give one up right before halftime. That’s a hard adjustment. We needed that really really bad. That was a lucky one.”
“That was just great athleticism by the Akron North kid,” Aquinas head coach Kevin Henderson said.
Aquinas got on the board when junior Jaymier Jenkins bobbled a punt, picked it up and returned it 70 yards for a touchdown down the right sideline. That tied it at 6-6 with 5:44 left in the second quarter. Jenkins later returned an interception to the North 3 with the Vikings marching inside the red zone.
“When you have a young man with that type of speed, you have to find a way to get him some touches,” Henderson said. “He has to have the ball in his hands. Obviously, based on tonight, he knows what to do when he gets it. We can build on that.”
Knights linebacker Devin Hollingsworth forced three North fumbles and recovered one. Henderson said his junior “played the best game of his life” and also credited the play of safety Riley Lehman.
“We played probably the best first half since I’ve been here,” said Henderson, whose team snapped a 32-game losing streak of its own last year. “For us, we have little margin for error, and we can’t shoot ourselves in the foot.”
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This article originally appeared on The Repository: Akron North football beats St. Thomas Aquinas to snap losing streak
Category: General Sports
