By Noah Dalton
SCOTTSBURG – After winning their first two games of the season, beating Crawford County and Madison back-to-back, Mitchell High School suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of Scottsburg on Friday, ultimately losing 56-6 at the final whistle.
The Warriors offense was relentless, scoring eight touchdowns in the game, four on the ground and four through the air, scoring 49 in the first half alone.
Scottsburg quarterback Nathan Byrd completed 10 of his 14 passing attempts on the evening for 253 yards, with four touchdowns thrown to Mason Collins (1), Landon Shuck (1) and Langdon Holbrook (2).
Shuck led the Warriors’ rushing offense, running for 146 yards on 14 carries and three touchdowns, needing only five attempts to cross into triple digit rushing yards.
“We struggled with their speed and athleticism a little bit and it was just an overall struggle. But, we’ll come back next week and we’ll go back to work that’s about all you can really say about it,” said Bluejackets’ head coach Kevin Kling.
For Mitchell, their lone score of the game came in the first quarter via a 90+ yard kickoff return from freshman Malakai Goodman.
The Bluejackets struggled to move the ball against Scottsburg’s defense, accumulating just 149 total yards of offense.
Quarterback Kale England completed 50% of his passes (7-14) for 118 yards. His most frequent target was Ashton Lumen, who caught five passes for 111 yards.
“We’re still gonna make young people mistakes. And like I said, the speed bothered us. All the blitzing bothered us a little bit, but we’ve just got to grow from it and get better,” Kling said.
Now 2-5 on the year, Mitchell has just two regular season games remaining, an upcoming matchup against Patoka Lake Athletic Conference leader Paoli (6-1), followed by their final game before the sectional, which will be against another PLAC opponent in Perry Central (4-3).
Heading into those games, Kling said his team will need to make the decision to continue playing the way they had in their previous two games, rather than regressing back to how they did performed against Scottsburg.
“We’ve got two ways we can go. We can either just say ‘this is us’, what we saw tonight, or we can get back to where we were. So that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to make a choice,” he said.
Next Friday’s battle with the Rams will be Senior Night at Terry Cole Field for the Bluejackets, set for kickoff at 7 p.m.
