Hamburg Hawks bottled up by Annville-Cleona, 30-14

ANNVILLE>> Things looked under control for the Hamburg Hawks and head coach Damian Buggy at halftime of their non-league clash with Lancaster-Lebanon League entrant Annville-Cleona Friday night.

Quarterback Nick Kuhn was running the offense efficiently, if not spectacularly; the Hawks’ defense had managed to contain playmaking QB Adam Fox in keeping the Little Dutchman off the board for the half.

All that  changed dramatically after the break.

Host A-C scored 21 points in a wild third quarter — the teams exchanged three touchdowns in 36 seconds — then rode that offensive leverage to a 30-14 victory over Hamburg.

“They wore us down,” Buggy said. “They busted a couple of runs with the dive play. Most of our linemen were going both ways and that definely played into it. We battled. I’m happy with the effort but not the result.”

Everything seemed to go south on the Hawks (1-1) at once. A-C (2-0) honed in on Kuhn whether he ran or attemped to pass; in one stretch during the third quarter the Dutchmen got to him for three sacks in five snaps. That followed a first half in which Ignacio Reynoso found sledding difficult between the tackles. Reynoso popped A-C league mate Elco for 117 yards and four scores a week ago — he had 19 on five totes through 24 minutes this time around. He finished the game with 56 yards on nine rushes.

“We tried to run some interior stuff and it just wasn’t there,” Buggy said. “We tried to establish Ignacio butcouldn’t do it. …then we tried to make some adjustments with our perimter game, but that’s when they answered back. It was a chess match. We kept trying to plug but didn’t have the answers.”

 

 

A 36-second blip during the third determined the course of the contest.

A-C wrapped two touchdowns around Reynoso’s lone shining moment, a 90-yard kickoff return response in-between, that jacked a 7-all ballgame to 21-14.

Cameron Hoch hauled in a 41-yard scoring strike from Fox with 5:49 to play in the third to give Annville-Cleona its first lead, at 14-7. Play-action rollout froze every member of the hamburg secondary, and there was not one white jersey within 15 yards of Hoch.

Reynoso returned the ensuing kickoff 90 yards to the house with an electrying runback tie re-tie the contest. But Fox took the first snsp from scrimmage after that 74 yards on an option keeper, bursting up the middle virtually untouched, for the third score in barely half a minute.

Even when things broke Hamburg’s way,  they didn’t. Aaron Nelson picked off Fox early in the final quarter near the Hawks’ 20, but the  offense marched backwards, then had a punt snuffed in the end zone for a safety to make it 23-14.

After Fox tallied a second rushing TD on a keeper to push it to 30-14, Logan Werley ran the kickoff back 75 yards for a score but had it called back on a penalty.

“We just didn’t execute,” Buggy said. “That’s pretty much it. But we’ll bounce back.  The way these kids can perform, they’ll bounce back.”

Kuhn’s 16-yard scamper through a vacated second level late in the first half capped a quick two-play, 52-yard drive set up by Jordan McAllister’s 36-yard run on the first snap of the drive.

Will Langan’s 37-run touchdown run early in the second half finally established some offensive chops for the Dutchmen, who had been held to 90 yards total offense in the first half. Langan’s TD tied the score at 7.

 

Hamburg – 0  7  7  0 — 14

Annville-Cleona – 0  0  21  9 — 30

 

Second quarter

H – Nick Huhn 16 run (aaron Nelson kick), 3:22

Third quarter

AC – Will Langan 37 run (Matt Light kick), 9:34

AC – Cameron Hoch 41 pass from AdamFox (Light kick), 5:49

H – Ignacio Reynoso 90 kick return (Nelson kick), 5:32

AC – Fox 74 run (Light kick), 5:13

Fourth quarter

AC – safety (punt block in end zone), 8:09

AC – Fox 9 run (Light kick), 5:25