The Cascade Champions struggled on the road against the Huntland Hornets, falling 40-7 on Friday night.

The scoring for the Hornets started on the opening kickoff, with BJ Summers taking it all the way back 90+ yards to give Huntland an early 7-0 lead 18 seconds in.

It would go from bad to worse for the visitors on the ensuing offensive possession. Trying to set up a throwback pass from Braxtyn Burris to Christian Casey, Burris was engulfed in the backfield immediately after taking the handoff. As he was falling down to the ground, the ball came loose, and Caden Smith picked it up for a scoop-n-score to double Huntland’s lead at 14-0 with 11:28 left in the first quarter before the hosts’ offense had run a single play.

On Cascade’s second possession, they did pick up a first down, but had to punt shortly afterwards. 

The Champions’ defense held serve, forcing a punt after Huntland picked up a first down of their own, but Cascade’s offense couldn’t generate anything positive and were forced to punt again. 

  The Cascade defense stayed tough, forcing Huntland into a 4th-and-4 at their own 43-yard line. However, BJ Summers took a toss down the right sideline for a 57-yard TD run to extend Huntland’s lead to 20-0 after the missed extra point with 1:03 left in the first quarter. 

It started out more of the same in the second quarter after the Hornets increased their lead to 27-0 on the opening play of the second quarter with a 43-yard TD pass from Grant Jernigan to Ellis Stewart down the left sideline. 

In Casey’s second career start under center, he looked slightly more comfortable, but the offensive line struggled to generate enough push up front in the run game early on. This started to change in the second quarter after going down 27-0 as Kaden Hill took advantage of the absence of Max Smith for the second consecutive game. On the ground, Hill helped move Cascade down the field for their only scoring drive of the game, and Casey found some chunk plays in the passing game as well. 

Casey found the end zone on a quarterback sneak from one yard out to cut into the hosts’ lead, 27-7, with 4:08 left in the first half. After the defense forced another punt, Casey began to air the ball out downfield as the clock dwindled down under two minutes. He found Burris down the seam for a big gain to get into Huntland territory, and then utilized his legs to get down into the red zone. He guided Cascade to the three-yard line, but on the final play of the half, the Champs were stuffed on the goaline by the Hornets to keep it a three-score game.

Cascade got the ball to start the second half, but the momentum was all on the side of the hosts. The visitors would not score in the second half while Huntland added a 67-yard TD run in the third quarter and a 21-yard TD run in the final frame to push the final score to 40-7. This was the first time Huntland had beaten Cascade since 2019, ending a 4-game losing streak to the Champions in impressive fashion.

Casey finished with 116 yards passing and an INT while Cascade finished with 108 rushing yards as a team. 

Huntland finished the game with only 44 yards passing – all of it coming on the TD pass to Stewart – but tallied 252 yards on the ground thanks in large part to the two 55+ yard TD runs early on.

Huntland improves to 2-1 overall.

Cascade falls to 0-3 on the season, but are scheduled to host Community for both Homecoming and Cory Phillips Night this coming Friday, LIVE on WZNG The Zinger 100.9 starting at 6:45 p.m.