Aynor offense sputters in loss to Andrew Jackson

The Aynor football team piled up over 200 yards rushing Friday night.

Unfortunately, not enough of them came in Andrew Jackson’s territory.

The Blue Jackets struggled to make the most of its yardage, reaching the end zone only once in a 25-8 loss to the Volunteers.

“We got stuck in the red zone a little bit tonight,” Aynor coach Jody Jenerette said. “They were just better than us. I thought we had our chances here and there, but right there in the end it got away from us. But that was a good high school football game. They were just a lot better than we were.”

Caleb Jenerette ran 25 times for 122 yards, Brayden Nobles ran 11 times for 61 yards – including a score from 20 yards out – and Noah Seaver added 38 yards on 10 carries for the Blue Jackets. However, Aynor turned the ball over on downs several times, seeing drives come to an abrupt halt.

“Most of the time they just stopped us on fourth down,” Jody Jenerette said. “We just came up short. It was a good job by their coaches and their coaching staff. They came up with a good plan and executed it.”

Trailing 12-0, the Blue Jackets narrowed the gap to four points on Nobles’ score, which was followed by a two-point conversion run in by Caleb Jenerette, to trail 12-8 at the half. However, Aynor was shut out in the second half, seeing its record drop to 1-1.

“The positive with our guys is there’s so many inexperienced guys in our huddle. Some of them should be playing JV right now but they’re playing under fire,” Jody Jenerette said. “We’ve just got to love ’em up, hug ’em up and get them ready to play at Green Sea Floyds [next week].”

Trojans – who execute a similar run-the-ball, time-consuming offense – are 1-0 after having a bye week Friday.

“Right now they’re 1-0 and one of the best teams in the area,” Jody Jenerette said. “We’re kind of licking our wounds right now. We need to go out there next week and play a little better than we did this week.”

Trojans coach Tony Sullivan talked lightheartedly about the matchup last week before talking about what a tough matchup his team will be facing.

“I joked with someone the other day, saying ‘We might be able to go watch the second half of someone else play,’ ” Sullivan quipped of how fast the game likely will go with the clock constantly running. “That might be over pretty quick.

“But we know they’re going to be physical on both sides of the ball. We’ll try to counter on our side. We’ll need to take care of the ball and get stops. It’ll be a physical game. We’ve got a tough game in front of us.”

This story was originally published August 26, 2016 at 10:59 PM with the headline "Aynor offense sputters in loss to Andrew Jackson."