Blue Devils take care of business on the road

The Mooresville Blue Devils took their first road trip of the season up to Mt. Ulla, NC Friday night to take on the West Rowan Falcons.  It was a good turnout for the Mooresville crowd as they are always known to travel well.  The band even made the trip for the first road game of the year and as always, put on a great show.

Coming off a loss to Hough last week, it was going to be interesting to see how the Blue Devils would respond.  Immediately Rowen Jackson made his presence felt as he sacked the West Rowan quarterback resulting in a deep loss on the play to open the game.  However, the nerves were a bit jumpy due to West Rowan scoring a touchdown to answer Jackson’s big play on the following snap.  West Rowan quarterback Noah Loblein found wide receiver Peter Simpson for an 85-yard touchdown which caught the Mooresville defense off guard.  There was clear miscommunication in the Mooresville defense which left Simpson wide open.  West Rowan took advantage of this and struck early making it a 7-0 lead in the first quarter.

Mooresville came back fast and began moving the ball well.  Davyn Reid made an acrobatic catch deep in the West Rowan territory on a third and forever, (photo) which gave Mooresville a huge first down.  However, on the next play, Mooresville fumbled and turned the ball back over to West Rowan.  This seemed to be the flow of the first half from both teams.

Steven Young in his first game of the season for Mooresville, left off where he began last year making more big plays Friday night.  West Rowan was threatening in the second quarter when Young stepped up big, dodged a West Rowan lineman and sacked Loblein resulting in a huge loss on the play.  Young and senior Jared Logan found success all night exposing the Falcons offense.  Logan was also in on the tackle, assisted and made many plays of his own against West Rowan.

Many people were anxiously awaiting to see what the offense would do against anyone other than the #2 team in the state.  Can this team gain yardage on the ground?  We saw a big passing play last week with Sebastian Brown to Latron Jackson but have been waiting years to get back to the likes of a power Mooresville running game.  It finally happened Friday when big yards came on the ground.  The offensive line, led by seniors Brady Justice, Blaise Mann, and William Rizzi, paved the way for Jawarn Howell (photo & audio interview below) to break out big with 211 yards on 21 carries for the evening.  Seniors Desmond Jackson at tight end Kendyn Smith, Xander Mercer-Johnson, assisted the line in opening holes all night.

Throughout the first half, Mooresville had many opportunities to put points on the board, but either faltered on 3rd and long, or a penalty took place. We did not have many penalties on the night (only 3), but they seemed to come at the worst times.

Things began to change in the second when Jamere Cherry made a great read and found Kaden Pigeon on a deep post route, who made a great catch, in West Rowan territory once again setting up the Blue Devils for a score.

Finally, Howell from 3 yards out made a power run up the middle carrying tacklers, for the first rushing touchdown of the game for Mooresville.  Jacob Monsour, who earlier in the week was told he would be filling in for senior Matt Dean, came through with the extra point tying the game at 7-7.  The sophomore Monsour who seemed unphased by his sudden move to varsity, was perfect on the night at 3/3 for extra points.

At halftime, we heard from both the West Rowan and Mooresville High School bands featuring a slightly extended show and appreciate all their hard work and effort it takes to go on the road.  Mooresville fans and students alike enjoyed them at the game and the cheerleaders did a fantastic job helping engage everyone in the game.

The second half proved to be a much better effort from the Mooresville Blue Devils.  This was like last week for they played far better after making half time adjustments.  Mooresville scored fast and began to open the game up.  Back was Jawarn Howell and the line opening holes large enough to fit a Mack truck as Howell, broke free on a few occasions extending the lead on 22 and a massive 70-yard run making the score 21-7.  Messiah Ramseur and Kaden Pigeon were instrumental in downfield blocking all night making more room in the secondary for Howell to gain yardage.  Jamere Cherry did well on his reads knowing when to pull or feed the hot hand of Jawarn Howell.

West Rowan did answer late when Loblein once again found Simpson for 13 yards making the score 21-13.  The subsequent extra point was blocked by Mooresville’s Xzavier Booker (photo) after gaining penetration up the middle stifling the attempt and sending the ball literally 30 feet straight up in the air.

Most of the night involved a lot of extraordinary defense up front.  Once again Caleb Edstrom, Xzaiver Booker, Jameson Grindrod, Andrew Washburn, Ray Watson, Steven Young, and Rowen Jackson proved too much for the Falcons offense.  Each of these players managed to find a way to make a big play forcing West Rowan to punt or end a drive on downs.

Rowen Jackson was all over the field on the night and dominating at his position.  We were lucky to get a brief conversation with him and some other Mooresville players below including Steven Young with two key sacks.  The Mooresville secondary also played well only giving up one big play on the evening.

Besides Jawarn Howell’s 211-yard dynamic performance, Davyn Reid was equally stellar on the night.  Reid accounted for 3 receptions in key situations setting up Howell’s TD runs and accounted for 131 all-purpose yards.  Jamere Cherry rounded out the devils at 3rd with 121 total rushing and passing yards combined. Kaden Pigeon had 2 catches and had a stellar punt pinning the West Rowan Falcons down on their own 2-yard line late in the game.

There is a special Mooresville Sports side piece of information about the Mooresville football team.  We have a total of 9 starters on this team who have had or are, an older brother star for Mooresville.  Dallas and Rowen Jackson, Malik and Treyvon Birchett, Ashton and Caleb Edstrom, State Champion Parker and Brady Justice, Aidan and Luke Kennedy, Avante Parham and Jamere Cherry, Davyn and Darian Reid, Steven and Landon Young, Blake and Jacob Goodin.  We have so many it is possible we may be missing another family, so please let us know if this is the case!  The one thing we have noticed about them ALL, is they have made names for themselves, and this is something worth mentioning.

The defense itself is a huge spark for the Mooresville football team and has been doing a lot of great things.  We anxiously await next week’s matchup versus Davie County, in which they will be tested, and need to perform at their best.  Davie County put up over 50 points vs West Rowan last week while the Falcons put up 30 of their own.  It will make for a very interesting matchup with Mooresville.

We appreciate the players & coach below who took the time to talk to Mooresville Sports post game:

*Special thanks to David Ramsey for statistical contributions to this story