Going into Saturday’s home opener, the Yellow Jacket football team knew the Bethany [1-2, 1-1]  rushing game would need to be stopped to win. But Waynesburg [0-3,0-2], couldn’t do that. The Jacket defense allowed  347 yards on the ground in the Bisons’ 41-17 win. 

Senior quarterback Carlin Bason lead the way offensively with 174 yards rushing, and 113 yards passing while accounting for two of Bethany’s six touchdowns on the afternoon.

Things started off well enough for Waynesburg. The Yellow Jackets held a 10-0 in the first quarter off of a 37-yard Mike Ryhal field goal and a 1-yard run from quarterback Tyler Perone. Head coach Chris Smithley was pleased with the start his team had, and felt things were going well.

“I thought everything was great, it’s a matter of handling some adversity,” Smithley said. “We had a fumble on the next series. They practiced too and we knew they were physical on defense and were going to get after [us]. We came out and did the right things initially and then some adversity hit, and we struggled a bit.”

 Following the fumble, Bason and the Bethany offense began to work. Running back Raekwon Wright started the scoring for Bethany with a 17-yard run, his first of three touchdowns on the day cutting it to 10-7. Including that first Bison score, the visitors would go on to score 41 unanswered points and hold a 41-10  lead with 6:50 to go in the game.

 

“We obviously didn’t play the way we wanted to, we know that” Smithley said. “Give Bethany credit they came out and battled through some adversity, came back and played a good four quarters of football and we didn’t do that.”

Waynesburg tacked on a touchdown with about four minutes left in the fourth quarter when freshman Justin Flack had a 59-yard touchdown run to score the Jackets final points of the day.

For the Jackets, one of the areas of focus heading into the week were fundamentals. Smithley said he was pleased with the defense initially, but as the day progressed, he saw things reoccur from last week that he believes they still need to work at.

“Our defense played well early on, we tackled, then things started to unravel a little bit and we fell back to some of the things we’d done last week,” Smithley said. “ We have to play four quarters of football.”

Waynesburg, still in search of its first win of the season will take to the road in week four for a contest in Beaver Falls next Saturday. The Jackets take on Geneva at 3 p.m.

“We’ve got to handle ourselves differently, like men,” Smithley said. “We have to deal with adversity because that’s life. Adversity is going to hit you every day when you get older, and I don’t feel like we did that and I take it on me for not getting our guys ready to go and ready to handle that adversity.”