Central City hangs for a half, but No. 6 Easton Valley pulls away for 49-6 win

CENTRAL CITY — What do you take out of Friday night’s game here between two good 8-Player football teams?

1. Despite losing its quarterback to injury in the season opener, Easton Valley has found the answers necessary to overcome that and remain the potent offensive team it had been before.

2. Central City has turned things around in 2022 and may have already clinched just the school’s third football playoff qualification. There’s some math you’ve gotta due to officially figure all that out, but bottom line is it’d be a shocker if the Wildcats won’t be playing in the postseason.

Central City also figured out a couple more things in this disappointing 49-6 homecoming loss.

“That we have got a lot of little things to take care of,” Coach Matt Miers said. “When you’re going against a team like that, as much as they’ve won the last two years, our guys facing the bright lights, a big game, we just made some mistakes early on. It wasn’t just one person, it was a lot of guys making a lot of mistakes.”

Like a fumble on the very first offensive play of the game. Easton Valley (4-1) turned that into a touchdown on its first offensive play.

Not a good start.

“Kind of bright-eyed,” Miers said. “It was almost like they were too content. We talk to them all the time that there’s a bell curve of motivation and performance. We were way beyond the motivation, so our performance dropped. That happens with a younger team, and we are still young. When you’re playing a great team like Easton Valley, those things happen.”

Central City (4-1) did an admirable job defensively against EV’s brick of a running back Charlie Simpson. Good gang tackling prevented Simpson from going off too much, though he did finish with 118 yards rushing on 20 carries and 72 yards on five receptions.

Simpson had two touchdowns and two 2-point conversion runs.

“You just try and grab him and hold on,” said Central City defensive end Mekhi Benton.

QB Hayden Felkey threw for 238 yards and four touchdowns and caught a 2-point conversion pass. He took over starting duties a couple of weeks ago after starter Carson Fuegen got hurt in EV’s season-opening 34-30 loss to Don Bosco.

The River Hawks lost in last year’s 8-Player title game to Anita CAM and were playoff quarterfinalists the season prior to that. Easton Valley’s defense did a number on Central City’s offense here, holding it to 77 yards rushing and 110 yards overall.

Aiden Klostermann’s 30-yard touchdown run late in the first quarter was Central City’s longest play of the night and definitely an outlier.

“They’re a good team, state runners-up last year,” Benton said. “We’ve just got to take that to heart. Even us, as a pretty good team, loses. They hit hard, they’re fast, we weren’t ready at the start. We’ve got to come ready next Friday. We’ve still got a ways to (in the season).”

Next week’s game is the Tractor Bowl against rival Springville.

“I don’t think we underestimated them tonight,” Benton said. “We just messed up, had a couple of blown coverages. We’ve got to fix that at practice. We’ve just got to be better.

“We definitely brought the intensity on defense. Our offense stalled out, our defense picked it up. Eventually your defense is going to break if our offense isn’t going the best it can. We held the best we could.”

Easton Valley 49, Central City 6

At Central City

Easton Valley 12 8 22 7-49

Central City 6 0 0 0- 6

Team Statistics

Individual Statistics

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