Wolfpack Blank Leopards, 27-0

BROOKSVILLE - During the last few weeks, Hernando High football coach Rodney Byrd has been in an awkward situation. As the second-year Leopard mentor, coming off a 2-8 season, he has seen his job advertised on the Florida High School Activities Association Web site. Thirty-eight coaches have answered the ad.

But during that time, Byrd still had to run his team's spring practice, which ended Friday night in a 27-0 loss to Ocala-West Port.

The Wolfpack varsity outscored the Leopards 21-0 in three quarters of action while the junior varsity played the third quarter with West Port winning 6-0.

After the game Friday, Byrd had a 15-minute closed door meeting with his team. And while he did not want to answer specific questions about what was said, he did give a general description late Friday.

"What was said was between me and the team, but some of it was about how we can become winners around here," said the Brooksville native. "It's not a hard thing to do, but with the kids and all the distractions we have around here right now, it's hard to have them focus on what they need to do to win."

Two signal callers

The Leopards rotated quarterbacks, but neither Kall Daniel nor Josh Ross had much success.

Daniel completed 1-of-4 passes for five yards with one interception while Ross went 2-for-9 for 18 yards and no picks.

"We learned that we need to work on picking up the blitz because they blitzed us all night long," said Byrd. "I was sort of surprised by that, but because we were rotating QBs, I knew we were going to have trouble making adjustments because we used a lot of back-ups and junior varsity players."

West Port opened the scoring Friday when place-kicker Cody Gerhart hit a 25-yard field goal in the first quarter.

Then in the second period, he connected on a 42-yard kick before John McNair scored on a 10-yard run and later added a 48-yard touchdown pass from Adam Johnson to make it 21-0 Wolfpack at the intermission.

With the team's JV players going in the third quarter, West Port scored a touchdown on a three-yard run by Dakota Jones that ended the scoring for the night.

For the game, Hernando was outgained by West Port 280 to 60 as the Wolfpack sacked Hernando quarterbacks four times.

But on the other side, Hernando running back Alvin Delaine led the Leopards with 50 yards on 16 carriers Friday night while during the JV part of the game; Tallis Roberts gained 47 yards on just three carries.

Overall, the Leopards had trouble with turnovers as they lost three fumbles and had one interception. But on defense, George Smith had two sacks for Hernando while Delaine picked off a West Port pass.

"You know, we didn't do a bad job," added Byrd. "We need to be more consistent in our blocking assignments. I think the distractions here may have been the key to it all."

Games stats

West Port 27, Hernando 0

WP 3 18 6 0 -- 27

HERN 0 0 0 0 -- 0

WP - FG Gerhart 25

WP - FG Gerhart 42

WP - McNair 10 run (Gerhart kick)

WP - McNair 48 pass from Johnson (Jose Burgos run)

WP - Jones 3 run (Larry Rogers run failed)