CHARLOTTESVILLE — The Eastern Hancock Royals came into Friday night’s football game looking for a little bit of payback.
Their own mistakes prevented them from getting it.
For the third time in a calendar year, the Heritage Christian Eagles rolled past the Royals. Eastern Hancock, in its first home game of 2019, couldn’t keep their winning streak going, falling behind early en route to a 37-20 loss.
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“The message after this was win or lose, the important thing is we have to get better Monday,” Eastern Hancock coach Doug Armstrong said. “It’s a long season. We’ve got tough games coming up. That’s the key. Second thing, lesson learned. Obviously, we should have learned it last year, but you can’t give the ball to the other team. That was the difference in the game. They had three defensive scores.”
The Eastern Hancock offense struggled from the start. They never could find running room, as Victor Olivo finished with just 27 yards on 12 carries. The passing game, so successful in the first three games of the season, never got fully in sync, either.
Sophomore quarterback Houston Swan, who entered the game as one of the state’s top passers in both yardage and touchdowns, had a tough time against the Eagles defense. He finished 20 of 37 for 238 yards with two touchdowns and four interceptions.
Eastern Hancock finished the game with five turnovers, three of which were returned for defensive touchdowns. The first, early in the opening quarter, was a bad snap that sailed over Swan’s head. Heritage Christian linebacker Ethan Lowry scooped it up and returned it for a touchdown.
The second, a third quarter interception by Lowry, was returned nearly 80 yards for a touchdown, effectively putting the game out of reach as it pushed the Eagles lead to 31-12. The third was another pick-6, late in the fourth quarter as the Royals were trying to mount a comeback.
“The biggest difference between this week and the first three weeks was the caliber of the competition and speed of their defense,” Armstrong said. “Where we were breaking a tackle and running into the end zone the last three weeks, this week, we’re getting tackled. Their speed maybe helped with a couple of the interceptions. Maybe that pass against a lesser opponent is complete, but you throw that pass against one of these dudes and it’s picked off.”
While the offense was struggling to do much with the football, Eastern Hancock’s defense was stuck on the field for a big portion of the game. They forced two turnovers, interceptions from Cole Rainbolt and Landon O’Neal.
They battled but struggled to stop Heritage Christian’s main weapons as the game wore on.
Eagles running back Colton Brown had a huge night, rushing the ball 33 times for 244 yards and a touchdown. When Brown wasn’t churning out yards, the Royals secondary, hampered a bit by injuries, had trouble handling 6-foot-5 wide receiver Harrison Eckel, who finished the game with nine catches for 116 yards, including gains of 26 and 24 that kept drives alive.
The visitors, only leading by a 17-12 margin at the half, came out of the break with a run-heavy attack, controlling the clock for much of the second half and putting the game away.
“Our defense battled hard,” Armstrong said. “Our defense is undersized, so we’ve got to play our tails off and gang-tackle. Their running back is top-notch. We over-ran him a couple of times. Our defense is set to give the running back a read and cut back into us. He’s a cut-back runner. They ran on us, but we really fought and battled on defense.”
The Royals were playing from behind from the start. Heritage Christian marched right down the field on their opening drive, starting the game off with a 7-0 lead. The Eagles added an interception and the fumble return for a touchdown, jumping out to a 14-0 lead.
Eastern Hancock fought back, marching 66 yards in four minutes and cutting the deficit in half with a 24-yard TD pass from Swan to J.P. Fuchs.
A bit of trickery helped the Royals get back into the game shortly before the half. With less than a minute left in the second quarter, Swan threw backwards to O’Neal, who found a wide open Fuchs downfield for a 39-yard touchdown pass, cutting the halftime deficit to 17-12.
A 42-yard run by Brown to open the second half set the tone and gave the Eagles momentum back, and they rolled from there, opening a 31-12 lead before Swan found Rainbolt for a 59-yard score with 3:58 left to play.
Rainbolt finished with seven catches for 127 yards and four rushes for 39 yards. Fuchs had five catches for 92 yards for the Royals.
Swan’s fourth interception, near the end of the game, was returned for a touchdown to round out the scoring.
It was the third time in three attempts that the Eagles topped the Royals, with a 33-6 regular-season win last year followed up by a 21-0 win in the sectional round. Just like last year, mistakes haunted the Royals, who fall to 3-1 on the year and will try to get their fourth win Friday at home against Knightstown.
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Knightstown at Eastern Hancock, 7 p.m.
Pendleton Heights at New Palestine, 7:30 p.m.
Delta at Mt. Vernon, 7:30 p.m.
Shelbyville at Greenfield-Central, 7:30 p.m.
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