Friday Night Without Lights

Kingfisher was unable to light up the scoreboard against North Rock Creek Friday night.

That’s because there were no lights to be lit.

A major power outage that turned the entire city dark just before kickoff forced the Yellowjackets to push their senior night game to Saturday afternoon.

Finally, KHS dismantled the Cougars 52-6 after the Cougars were tasked with making two trips from Shawnee in less than one day’s time.

The victory, which came 19 hours after originally scheduled, secured Kingfi sher’s spot in the playoffs for the 23rd straight year.

“You have a set of goals at the beginning of the year and making the playoffs is always one of them,” said KHS head coach Jeff Myers.

Each of his 19 KHS teams have qualified for the playoffs.

The Jackets are now 6-3 overall and 4-2 in District 3A-1.

They’re in a tie for third place with Anadarko. That tie will be broken Thursday when KHS visits the Warriors.

The game was originally scheduled for Friday, but teams agreed to move it up a day due to potential weather issues.

Delaying the Week 9 game wasn’t an issue for KHS as Kingfisher put points on the board as early as possible…as in the opening kickoff.

Junior Damien Haynes grabbed the kick at his 34, then crossed the field untouched and made his way to the end zone for a 66-yard kickoff return.

The rest of the half was much the same as KHS scored with all three phases to lead 45-0 at the break.

It was 31-0 after just one quarter.

Haynes made it 24-0 with his second TD of the game, this one a 24-yard reception from Jax Sternberger.

At that point, there was still 7:20 left in the quarter.

That was preceded by a 33-yard field goal by Aaron Delatorre and a 1-yard interception return for a score by Jake Reagan.

Reagan caught a ball that was swatted by Harrison Evans and fell back into the end zone for a 17-0 advantage.

One snap later and Ethan Karcher pounced on a Cougar fumble to set up Haynes’ TD catch.

North Rock Creek’s next possession ended with a Kasen Blair interception.

The freshman started at cornerback.

“We made a couple of moves on defense for a few reasons,” said Myers. “We wanted to give some of our younger guys some meaningful snaps and it also allowed us to rest some guys who play both ways and do a lot of running during the course of the game.”

Blair rewarded that move with two picks on the day.

His first interception and return set up the Jackets at the Cougar 5 and led to a 2-yard scoring run by Sternberger.

Then on the first play of the second quarter, Blair caught a 36-yard touchdown from Sternberger.

The Jackets added an 8-yard scoring run by Cade Cooper late in the half and a 31-yard scoring run by Dallen Barton in the third quarter.

Kingfisher’s four takeaways and overall smothering defense gave the Jackets great field position all afternoon and was partly to “blame” for the Jackets’ pedestrian 236 yards of total offense.

“We were either turning them over or forcing punts and in most cases it put our offense in fantastic position,” Myers said.

The Cougars punted four times and had just 77 total yards of offense.

They had as many turnovers as first downs.

“Our defense has been solid most of the year and really turned it up Saturday,” Myers said.

Barton led the team with seven tackles.

Evans added six and Reagan five.

The visitors’ only score came late in the fourth when an errant handoff attempt by KHS led to a scoop-and-score by Caleb Hawkins.

Barton also led the team in rushing with 76 yards on 11 attempts.

Not playing last week’s game until Saturday paired with moving up this week’s game means the Jackets have even less time than a normal quick turnaround week.

“We’ll just have to deal with it,” Myers said. “We weren’t expecting a delay last week, but the guys responded well. We expect them to do the same this week and be ready to go at Anadarko.”