Dora needs one half to advance to eight-man second round

DORA — The No. 5 Dora Coyotes will advance to next week’s eight-man quarterfinals, following an opening round blowout victory at home on Friday night. The Coyotes needed just one half of football to beat the No. 12 Pine Hill Warriors, scoring nine touchdowns in a 64-0 rout.

“I thought our kids played pretty clean, for the most part. We have a lot of cleaning up to do before next Friday, even though it didn’t show up on the scoreboard,” Coyotes coach Mason McBee said. “There were still missed assignments that we need to get better at. That’s one thing we were really trying to focus on is executing offensive and defensive gameplans. I’m glad to have a couple players back, and they played well and we got through it healthy. It’s nice to move on to the quarterfinals and we’re looking forward to it.”

Dora (6-3) stormed out of the gate with a two-play opening drive. Marcus Pallares gained 15 yards on the opening play from scrimmage before Kaull Burton rumbled 25 yards into the endzone on the next play to give Dora an early 6-0 lead.

Pine Hill (3-4), however, came out strongly on its opening drive, as well. Quarterback Joel Ladon got into the open field and raced 23 yards down the field on second-and-3, bringing the Warriors down to the Dora 25.

However, after a 5-yard completion on the next play, Ladon threw back-to-back incompletions, and then on fourth-and-long, was swarmed by Coyote defenders, before completing a pass well-behind the line of scrimmage.

From there, Dora had its way with Pine Hill. Kaull Burton sprinted 57 yards on the next play, before calling his own number on the two-point conversion, to quickly give Dora a 14-0 advantage, just 2:02 into the ballgame.

Pallares soon put the ball in the end zone on Dora’s next drive, before quarterback Hayden Skinner connected with Burton from 4 yards out on the following drive, to extend the lead to 28-0. The Coyotes would add another score before the end of the quarter, before going on to score 28 more points in the second quarter.

The NMAA’s 50-point rule officially goes into effect at halftime, and for the Coyotes, they were able to take full advantage of that. Burton needed just seven carries to reach 155 yards rushing, while scoring four total touchdowns (three rushing) on the night.

“We just came into this game and we knew we had to play with all that we got,” Burton said. “We couldn’t win this game unless we were a team, and we came out here and played this game we love.”

Defensively, the Coyotes held the Warriors to just 51 total yards and three first downs. According to McBee, the slow start on the first defensive possession can be attributed to installing some new defensive plays during last week’s bye, as well as a lack of execution as far as missed assignments goes.

However, after allowing 52 yards on the first drive, the Coyote defense held Pine Hill to negative (-1) total yard for the rest of the night. Between players, such as Burton and Skinner, getting healthy — as Skinner returned for his first game in weeks, while Burton is still not 100 percent recovered from an early-season knee injury and a defense that’s starting to figure out the scheme, things are starting to look up at the right time for Dora.

That will be key, because next week’s opponent will be no walk in the park, compared to Pine Hill. Dora will travel to No. 4 Tatum (6-3) next Friday night, as the Coyotes will face a Tatum team that routed them, 69-44, back on Sept. 8.

For McBee, defense is what halted them the first time around, and the hope is that continued growth from week to week since then will give his squad a chance to pull off the victory.

“You score 44 points, you should win a football game. That first game, the biggest thing about that was our kids were still adjusting to our defense. A lot of our kids came from Elida, and they’ve never played eight-man before,” McBee explained.

“It wasn’t on them specifically, but every year in Dora, we have a brand new group together. We’re teaching new stuff every year, and that game in particular, we missed a ton of assignments. I don’t think (Tatum) ever scored from inside our 10-yard line — everything was a big play. We’re looking to shore up our defense, be in the right spots and try to make plays from there. I think if we can line up and get in the right spots, I feel good about Tatum.”