Tennessee High Improves To 6-0 With Win Over Volunteer

By JIMMY MOORE
Sports correspondent
CHURCH HILL, Tenn. – Unbeaten Tennessee High (6-0, 3-0) returned to Big Eight Conference action Friday night at Volunteer following last week’s 38-17 win at Greeneville. The Vikings would score points in every period on the way to their 42-7 victory over the Falcons (0-6, 0-3).

Senior quarterback Taylor Harmon completed 11-of-17 passes for 144 yards and two touchdowns to lead the visitors offensively while Justin Fahn returned a blocked punt 19 yards for another touchdown.
Viking head coach Greg Stubbs knew the Falcons would be his team’s final tune-up before their stretch run and, although they came away with the easy victory, there’s still much room for improvement.

“I thought at times tonight we played sluggish, had too many penalties (six-for-57) and made too many mistakes,” Stubbs said. “We were a football team that was not completely focused coming in here tonight.
“We didn’t play with any enthusiasm and didn’t have any bounce. We just kind of showed up and played. Sometimes you have to play those games. You can’t come to this thing every week with fire in your eyes. We scored some points but didn’t look real sharp at times doing it.”

The Vikings didn’t take long to light up the scoreboard. Matt Pendleton romped up the middle and broke loose on a 46-yard run and, after Tyler Graham booted the first of seven extra points, the visitors were off and running.

Volunteer’s offense was able to move the chains for a trio of first downs before stalling and the teams traded punts, the only time all night the Vikings were forced to kick.

Harmon struck pay dirt on Tennessee High’s next two possessions, the first coming on a 23-yard strike to Keenan Shepard before connecting with Cody Snyder to send the teams to rest with the Vikings on top 21-0 and the visitors would tack on 21 second-half points.

“The first half was a really ugly half,” Harmon said. “I’m sure we’ll really be critiqued on that a lot Sunday. But we’ve got to put this game behind us. We’ve got a big game coming up next week in the Stone Castle.
“Our running game is what this program is built upon and that is what we are expected to do and tonight when we didn’t do it, it kind of affected us a lot offensively but we still came out with a win.”
Shephard led the Vikings’ rushing attack with 88 yards on 15 carries.

Tennessee High collected 142 of their 144 passing yards in the first half but went mostly to their ground game after intermission when they rushed for 144 yards.

“When we came out in the second half we kind of wanted to get Keenan going and he’s a little banged up so we pulled him in the third quarter,” added Stubbs. “Our goal coming out in the second half was to have a three-and-out on defense and see if we could get our running game established.
“We’re going to need a running game next week (against Dobyns-Bennett) and is has been kind of sluggish the last couple of weeks. That’s something we’re going to have to work on this week in practice and throw off that play action.”

Tennessee High 14 7 14 7--42
Volunteer 0 0 0 0--0
Scoring Summary
THS—Matt Pendleton 46 run (Tyler Graham kick)
THS—Keenan Shepard 23 pass form Taylor Harmon (Graham)
THS—Cody Snyder 34 pass from Harmon (Graham kick)
THS—Justin Fahn 19 blocked kick
THS—Bradley Tallman 2 run (Graham kick)
THS—Orlando Gammon 20 run (Graham)
Team Stats
First Downs: THS 19, V 11; Rushes-Yards: THS 31-248, V 30-107; Passing Yards: THS 144, V 49: Comp.-Att.-Int.: THS 11-17-0, V 6-19-0; Fumbles-Lost: THS 1-1, V 0-0; Penalties-Yards: THS 6-57, V 4-37; Punts-Average: THS 1-33.0, V 5-33.4