Greenland spoils Bobcats’ home debut

On the scoreboard, the Greenland Pirates dominated last Friday’s game against Berryville at Bobcat Stadium, scoring touchdowns on all six of their first-half possessions on the way to a 41-7 victory.

On film, however, Berryville coach Bryan Hutson said the game was more competitive than the score would indicate. It was the Bobcats’ first home game of the season after Berryville opened the year with a loss at West Fork.

“Greenland played really well,” Hutson said. “Going back and looking at the film, it was closer at times than we thought. They converted three fourth downs. Two of them were from penalties. And we had a couple of big plays called back because of penalties. They’re a good ballclub. I wish we’d have played a little better, but we shot ourselves in the foot a couple of times and it kept us from making it a closer game.”

Greenland (2-1) covered a total of 332 yards on its six first-half possessions, with quarterback Max Meredith accounting for four touchdowns. Meredith ran for three scores and completed 11 of 14 passes for 183 yards and a touchdown.

The Pirates’ first touchdown drive was helped by a defensive holding penalty against the Bobcats that negated what would have been a third-and-9 from the Berryville 33. A bad snap on a fourthdown play for Berryville set up Greenland’s second score. Then, trailing 14-0, the Bobcats saw a big gain on a pass from quarterback Decimus Ruiz to running back Nay Blut wiped out by a penalty.

“We get a 65-yard pass play and it’s called back because we were in slight motion,” Hutson said. “So it didn’t go our way. Greenland’s a good football team. It just is what it is.”

On its next possession after the penalty that negated Blut’s catch and run, Greenland threw incomplete on fourth down, but another defensive holding penalty kept the drive alive. Meredith kept the ball up the middle on a fourth-and-2 play for an 18-yard touchdown as the Pirates extended their lead to 21-0 on the final play of the first quarter.

Trailing 28-0, Berryville drove to the Greenland 34 on its second possession of the second quarter, highlighted by Ruiz’s 15-yard run on fourth-and-2 from the Bobcats’ 44. But the Pirates intercepted a third-down pass and returned it back inside Berryville territory to set up another touchdown drive.

There were some bright spots for the Bobcats. Ethan Williams scored the only touchdown of the second half on a 12-yard cutback run with 9:56 left in the fourth quarter, and Blut ran for more than 100 yards.

Hutson said Berryville has been forced to play several players out of position.

“We’ve got so many guys out, for various reasons, that we’ve got guys playing positions they’ve never played,” he said. “We’ve got some guys anyway that have never even played football. Now we’ve got them playing positions where they’ve never even practiced because we’ve got to move people around. So it becomes a little bit of a challenge, in practice and in games, to get the personnel fittings just right. And some things that you planned on doing, you just can’t do because of personnel.”

Berryville (0-2) will be back on home on Friday against Decatur (0-3). The Bulldogs, a Class 2A team, have been outscored 168-6 this season. Berryville beat Decatur 61-0 in the teams’ last meeting in 2017. After that season, Decatur moved to eight-man football. This is the Bulldogs’ first season returning to 11-man football.

Hutson’s first head coaching job was at Decatur in the late 1990s, and Bulldogs coach Joseph Moore was an assistant under Hutson.

“They’ll probably try to run a lot of the same kind of stuff that we do,” Hutson said. “They’re struggling a little bit, kind of like we are, so we need to hopefully get healthy and cut down on our mistakes so we can beat ’em.”

Friday’s kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Bobcat Stadium.