Eaton’s Gavin Winings tries to avoid a Greenville defender after catching a pass during the Eagles 23-7 season-opening win on Thursday, Aug. 22.
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
EATON — Eaton opened the 2024 football season with a 23-7 win over visiting Greenville on Thursday, Aug. 22.
Although it wasn’t exactly pretty at times, the Eagles controlled the contest from start to finish and did just enough to pick up their fifth straight win over the Green Wave.
Eaton scored on its first two possessions of the game to grab a 10-0 lead with 33 seconds left in the fist quarter, then didn’t score again until adding two touchdowns in the fourth quarter to put the game away.
“It was Week one. We came out hot. I think we exhaled just a little bit. Didn’t play as clean as we wanted. It wasn’t very good, but it was good enough,” Eaton coach Brad Davis said.
Brycen Simpson scored on a 3-yard run with 6:16 left in the first quarter, capping off an 11-play drive.
A 40-yard Jon Hewitt field goal wrapped up the first half scoring.
Greenville struck first in the second half.
The Green Wave scored on the second play of the third quarter on an 83-yard touchdown pass.
“We wanted to come out at halftime a little bit stronger,” Davis said. “That was the challenge at halftime. Was, let’s pick our energy up, pick our effort up a little bit, but we did what we needed to do there to close the game out.”
Neither team was able to do much offensively for the remainder of the third quarter until Eaton took possession at its own 46-yard line with 2:14 left. Seven plays later Cordis Berard rumbled into the end zone for a 4-yard TD run to push the Eagles lead to 17-7 with 11:26 left in the game.
The Green Wave looked to respond driving into Eaton territory with just under eight minutes left, but senior Gavin Winings came up with what might have been the defensive play of the game when he intercepted a pass to give his team the ball back.
“I think our flat players were getting frustrated with some of the passes getting over top of them. That doesn’t happen very much,” Davis said. “We were hoping they would continue to go to that, because we knew Gavin (Winings) and Brandon (Couch) would start making plays there when they needed to, and he was in a perfect spot and took advantage of it.”
From there, Eaton turned to its running game. Eight straight runs took more than four minutes off the clock and resulted in a 13-yard TD run by Berard to extend the Eagles lead to 23-7.
“That’s just challenging the offensive line,” Davis said. “That’s what we’re going to have to do. We got to rely on those guys and Cordis and Brycen in the run game so that was really just a challenge of close the game out, and this is how we’re going to do it. And they responded.”
Berard rushed for 107 yards on 19 carries, while Simpson added 70 yards on nine carries.
Quarterback Aaron Rogers completed 11-of-14 passes for 122 and rushed for 62 yards on nine carries.
Conner Bach had five catches for 61 yards and Couch hauled in four catches for 44 yards.
Dylan Gamble led the team with seven tackles. Couch added six and Preston Orr had two sacks.
“It was a win, and all wins are good,” Davis said.
Eaton (1-0) will return to action on Friday, Aug. 30 as the Eagles make a trip over the border to battle Richmond (Ind.). Eaton beat Richmond last season 49-7.
Reach Eddie Mowen Jr. at 937-683-4061 and follow on X @emowenjr.
