BROCKWAY — Thriving in the battle of football attrition, the Redbank Valley Bulldogs are District 9 Class 1A champions.
Playing their second playoff game with a different starting quarterback, the Bulldogs gave up the first touchdown of the game then reeled off the rest of the points in a 26-7 win over Port Allegany Friday night at Varischetti Field.
It certainly wasn’t as easy as the Bulldogs’ 57-13 rout of the Gators back on Oct. 13, but the Bulldogs turned in a strong defensive effort and got a huge lift from backup sophomore quarterback Jaxon Huffman.
The only games Huffman has ever started at quarterback were this year’s junior varsity games, playing the first half only. He’s a key starter at linebacker on defense, but he hasn’t been needed at QB until starter Braylon Wagner and his 2,500 yards and 39 TD passes were sidelined with a shoulder injury suffered in the Week 10 loss to Central Clarion.
But so was Huffman, who missed the Coudersport game with a shoulder injury. He was cleared after hurting his AC joint in his right throwing shoulder.
So Huffman just went out and threw for 349 yards and three touchdowns, completing 13 of 22 passes in his varsity starting debut.
“Braylon is a record-setter and I can’t reiterate enough that Braylon is our guy at quarterback and Jaxon was the one who demanded that Braylon go in and take the knee (last three plays at end),” Bulldogs head coach Blane Gold said. “Jaxon is a very good quarterback. He’s got it in his blood and anybody from our area knows that.
“Jaxon’s mindset is way beyond his years and been raised in a tremendous family. He’s seen his older sisters and what they’ve done as athletes.”
Nine of Huffman’s completions went to Ashton Kahle for a whopping 249 yards. He caught Huffman TD passes of 21 and 81 yards, both coming less than four minutes into the third quarter and giving the what turned out to be an insurmountable 19-7 lead by the 8:20 mark of the third.
“I told Jaxon as soon as we found out he was our starter this week, to go play ball, have fun out there and we all believe in you,” Kahle said. “We all know that you can throw the football and perform and it’s just a high level of trust. I’m glad that not only me but the whole team had trust in Jaxson, so it goes a long way.”
Kahle wasn’t around at the end of last year, getting kicked off the team after an off-the-field incident. The standout senior receiver/defensive back came back this year with something to prove and became the first Bulldogs receiver to go over 1,000 yards in a season.
The Bulldogs capped off the win with Huffman’s 3-yard TD run with 6:54 left in the fourth quarter.
Redbank Valley outgained the Gators, 405-272, and kept Port out of the end zone after giving up the first points on Peyton Stiles’ 49-yard TD run with 1:30 left in the first quarter. They stopped the Gators on downs at the Bulldogs’ 15 and forced the Gators to try and miss a 22-yard field goal, both in the second quarter.
Huffman, who tossed a 15-yard TD pass to Mason Clouse early in the second quarter for the Bulldogs’ first points, was intercepted at the Port 10 five plays after the Gators’ missed field goal with just 1:26 left before halftime. On the next play, Caden Adams recovered a fumbled snap, but the Bulldogs couldn’t cash in on a red zone opportunity when Owen Clouse missed a 36-yard field goal with 27.8 seconds left in the half.
But the momentum was on the Bulldogs’ side, especially after the Bulldogs needed just three plays to go 65 yards to start the second-half scoring on Huffman’s 21-yard flip pass to Kahle.
After forcing the Gators to punt, it was Huffman hitting Kahle on their 81-yarder to make it 19-7.
The Gators ran for 181 of their 235 yards in the first half. Stiles finished with 149 yards on 22 carries after going for 129 on 16 tries in the first half. Aiden Bliss ran for 72 yards on 15 carries, nine carries going for 24 yards after halftime.
The defensive effort was very satisfying for Gold, who runs the defensive unit.
“We had had three first-team all-conference defensive players back and we were fortunate they were at each level with Brandon on the line, Caden at linebacker and Mason Clouse in the secondary and that’s what’s led us,” he said. “All three touchdowns we gave up to Port in the two games, we were aligned wrong. So we told the kids at halftime, if we are aligned correctly, we’re good.
“We knew we weren’t going to win the battle between the tackles, so the entire game plan was we were going to plug every gap and make them bounce it (outside) to Mason Clouse, Ashton and Owen. We knew we were going to give up chunks at times and we brought our safeties up to the box and we felt confident that they weren’t going to be able to throw the football on us and we had our corners playing safeties. So we kind of got creative with our scheme this week.”
