Mustangs shocked at home
North Moore Stunned at home
A game that had been anticipated for months left the fans speechless. Coming off a historical season, the Mustangs opened their season last week with a road win over Carver 27-0. They had their home opener Friday night in front of a large crowd, as coach Carrouth described them “the best fans in the world.” The community, though small, cares about their North Moore sports. It’s a true family atmosphere.
The Northwestern Randolph Cougers put the Mustangs down early, scoring 8 minutes into the first quarter. The Cougers scored a second touchdown and two point conversion, making the score 14-0 early in the second quarter.
The Mustangs wouldn’t stay silent for long with 9 to go in the half when Jakarey Gillis broke free and scored a 32 yard touchdown run. North Moore missed the extra point. Gillis got another look in the second quarter for his second touchdown on the night. The two point conversion was no good, making the score 14-12.
Western Randolph scored again late in the fourth and on the last offensive drive for North Moore a bad snap caused a fumble and Cougars recovered. North Moore lost 22-12.
The big story on the night was the amount of penalties. from encroachment to pass interference, the Mustangs hurt themselves by giving up a lot of yardage, mainly on the defensive side of the ball. “A lot of it was undisciplined stuff. We can’t jump off sides as many times as we did tonight. We can’t put ourselves in negative situations,” said Carrouth.
North Moore will host their first conference game of the season on Thursday against Northwood. Northwood is 1-1 and coming off a close win against Union Pines. “We got to have short memories. We have to learn from what happened tonight. That’s a big piece of it. We got to go in and take what happened to us tonight and correct those. We saw some of those things last week. We didn’t correct them and we did them again tonight and now we’re suffering the loss,” said Carrouth.
Written by Curtis Self, Photos by Stacy Self
