By Brian Pitts

For the Salisbury Post

GREENSBORO — High-powered Dudley added to Davie County’s early-season lumps last night, stomping the War Eagles, 56-14.

It was a matchup of two teams going in opposite directions. The Panthers (3-0) have outscored their victims 146-28 while winning 28 straight games on the field. Davie (0-3) has been outscored, 144-50, this season.
Davie has two more non-conference games to right the ship and plays at North Rowan next week.
“You hear the saying, ‘You’ve got to go through the storm to see a little sunshine,’” Davie coach Devore Holman said. “Well, we’ve put our guys in the storm — and I mean a storm — and I tell them every day the madness behind this whole schedule is to make sure when we get to the CPC that we’ve been through the meat of a schedule and now we can play.”
Complicating matters for the War Eagles, they had three more linemen go down. Defensive tackle Austin Freidt and offensive linemen Bailey Sloan and Zach Clubb each had to be helped off the field. The week before at West Rowan, offensive tackle Austin King suffered an injury.
After a bit of a slow start, the Panthers opened the scoring with 7:08 left in the first quarter on their third possession — and the rout was on as they hit pay dirt on four straight series, on the way to a 35-8 halftime cushion.
In the decisive first half, Dudley quarterback Hendon Hooker and running back Connell Young combined for 237 rushing yards. Hooker also threw for 76 yards while connecting with five different receivers.
For the game, Davie failed on 12-of-15 third-down conversions, had 11 rushing yards and got out-gained 467-182 in total yardage. Davie quarterback Chris Reynolds took a serious beating, getting sacked nine times and getting hit as he threw seven more times — not to mention the licks he absorbed on rushing attempts. Somehow, he kept getting up.
Davie’s two scores were on Reynolds passes to the 1-2 punch of Ben Ellis, who made an incredible 39-yard catch at the goal line amid double coverage, and Cooper Wall, who burned Dudley on a go route for a 50-yard TD.
“Hey, I’ve been around Ben long enough to know that he is a competitor for the ball,” Holman said of Ellis’ TD with a defender draped on his back. “If he has a chance to go get it, even when he doesn’t have a chance to go get it, he’s going to go try to get that ball.
“Ol’ Cooper got loose. He made a heck of a catch, he made a move and he got in the end zone. Sometimes they don’t get opportunities to make catches because the pass rush is so intense, but we’re trying to get the ball in those guys’ hands every chance we get.”