Shields, CB West end season with win over William Tennent
DOYLESTOWN— There wasn’t much offense to speak of in the first half as CB West took on William Tennent in an SOL Continental showdown, but whenever there was a sliver of daylight it was senior quarterback Eddie Shields that seemed to find it and capitalize, leading the Bucks to a 32-6 win on senior night.
Shields finished the opening half with 110 out of his team’s 112 total yards and converted on by far the biggest play of the first two quarters.
“He can really throw the football.” Said CB West head coach Chas Cathers “He does a nice job and has been a leader all year. He’s a great quarterback and we’re going to miss him.”
With just 15 seconds remaining in the second, a botched Tennent snap on a punt gave the Bucks the ball at the Panthers’ 25 with a couple chances to convert, and that’s exactly what they did.
Shields was able to hook up with wide out Kyle Taylor for a touchdown on a beautiful deep ball to the corner of the end zone to break the 0-0 tie before half.
“We just knew we had them vertically downfield and decided to spread them out a little bit more.” Said Shields “I think they actually had a mistake in their coverage and we just found the hole.”
Shields wouldn’t stop there. He finished the night with 204 yards in the air, 61 on the ground and 4 touchdowns in his final game in a CB West jersey, as they would use the momentum from that touchdown to pull away in the second half.
“I think the rain slowed us down a little bit in the first half. Once it started to settle down we knew we could throw it and Eddie did a great job commanding the offense and the offensive line did a great job blocking for everyone.” Said Cathers
“We knew they were going to play a lot of man to man especially with their linebackers walking up so we wanted to spread them out a little bit and throw the ball and we did a good job executing.”
Shields wasn’t the only senior that came to play on senior night. Kyle Taylor, who caught the big touchdown before the half, finished the night with 107 yards receiving and three touchdowns to go out in style.
Tennent was able to move the ball on the ground somewhat effectively, with Dan Costello finishing the game with 101 yards and a score of his own, but penalties and turnovers killed their momentum, much like they have all season long.
“It seems like all season long one play has kind of hurt us and then it’s kind of a trickledown effect and it happened again today.” Said Tennent head coach Leo Plenski “We’ve been inconsistent all year because of penalties or injuries so we’ve had multiple guys playing multiple positions that shouldn’t be there.”
This was an important season for Plenski, his first as the Tennent head coach. The Panthers managed to finish at (4-6) and the coaching staff was able to learn a lot about the players they have coming back next year.
We learned a lot about each player.” Said Plenski “Now we know going into next season we’re going to have a lot of guys with a lot of experience and that’s what we’ve been lacking. We graduated a lot of seniors before I got here and there were two guys that had experience on the offensive line when I got here and they were out for the season so now we have the experience.”
Finishing the season at (3-7) wasn’t exactly how CB West saw their season ending coming into the year, but it’s always nice to send the seniors out with a convincing victory over a conference foe like they did on this night.
“Just with everything we’ve been through last season and the adversity we faced this season this is the greatest thing we could’ve given the seniors is to go out on top like this.” Said Shields
