Hartsville spoils Darlington’s senior night
By Drake Horton, Contributing Writer
The Darlington Falcon seniors bid farewell to its family, friends and fans this past Friday night as the Falcons celebrated senior night against one of Darlington’s biggest rivals, the Hartsville Red Foxes.
While the ceremony before the game and during halftime was eloquent and tasteful, the game was a completely different story. Instead of going off with one of the biggest upsets in the state this year, Hartsville cruised to a 56-7 victory capping off a very tough regular season for the Falcons.
“They have a really good football team, Coach Calabrese and his staff do an unbelievable job,” Darlington head coach John Jones said after the game. “We’ve got to play good football and be fundamentally sound. and we were not tonight.”
Hartsville, who received the opening kickoff, took its first play from scrimmage for a63-yard touchdown run and from there the Red Foxes never looked back.
Going into the game Hartsville had been struggling with turnovers, but against Darlington the Red Foxes clicked on all cylinders. The Red Foxes scored a touchdown its first eight drives of the game, with two of the drives coming off of Darlington interceptions by quarterback Joseph Scott.
“It feels good,” Hartsville head coach Jeff Calabrese said after the game. “It’s been a long time coming. I thought our kids played really well, I’m very proud of them, they’ve been working real hard to try and fix some of our mistakes. Tonight we did it, it was a very clean game, we played well and I’m very proud of them.”
Darlington never threw in the towel, however and despite the lopsided nature of the game the Falcons kept scrapping and finally scored in the fourth quarter with Jordan English catching a one-yard touchdown with 3:05 left in the game.
A big turning point in the game for the Falcons was during their first drive in the first quarter. Down 7-0 after Hartsville’s quick strike, Darlington put together a very impressive drive that had all the promise of ending in a touchdown.
Unfortunately, the drive did not end in any points and sucked the momentum out of Darlington’s sails.
On the fourth play of the drive, the Falcons Nick Self looked like he had scored on a 20-yard touchdown pass from Scott, but it was negated to an illegal block in the back penalty by Darlington.
The drive ended with the Falcons turning the ball over on downs at the Hartsville three-yard line. Hartsville needed only three plays following that play to capitalize, with the Red Foxes breaking off another big run for a touchdown, this time from 52 yards out.
While there were many differences in the game between Darlington and Hartsville, the biggest difference was who made the big plays – and who did not.
And while the loss was another humbling moment for the Falcons, there is no time to sulk in the defeat as Darlington will prepare for the playoffs after its fourth place finish in the region.
Darlington finishes the regular season with a 1-9 record and Hartsville improves to 8-1 overall. The Red Foxes have one regular season game left, a makeup game against Lakewood that was postponed due to Hurricane Matthew.
County Recap
The Lamar Silver Foxes kept its undefeated season going with a 17-14 win over the McBee Panthers at home this past Friday. Lamar has one game left against Lewisville, a makeup due to Hurricane Matthew.
Trinity-Byrnes defeated Augusta Christian 26-21 this past Friday to improve to 7-2 overall. They now prepare for the playoffs, taking on Bethesda Academy at home.
We will share all photos from Senior Night of the football team, cheerleaders, and band members next week.