Columbus North’s Dumo Kak celebrates after the defense scored a safety during a football game against Southport at Columbus North High School in Columbus, Ind., Friday, Sept. 1, 2023.
The Republic file photo
It was another big-time defensive performance from Columbus North and a much-improved offensive performance from Columbus East on Friday night.
The Bull Dogs put together their second consecutive dominating defensive effort in a 35-6 win against Southport in the Conference Indiana opener. The Cardinals didn’t score until the final play of the game against North’s JV defense.
North was that close to posting back-to-back shutouts for the first time since blanking Franklin Central and Terre Haute South in 2016. The Bull Dogs had shut out Columbus East the previous week.
North’s defense recorded a safety for the second consecutive week. The Bull Dogs’ defense or special teams — or both — have scored in all three games.
“I’ve been really impressed with our defense so far this season,” North coach Logan Haston said. “We told them we needed to attack early, and they did a good job of that. They did a good job again Friday night.”
The Bull Dogs offense also was effective for most of the game.
“We’re getting there,” Haston said. “Obviously, we’re young on that side of the football. Our offensive line is starting to gel together. We’re getting a lot of leadership out of that unit. Our quarterback (sophomore Asher Ratliff) is young, but he’s getting better and better every week. His understanding of the offense is incredible, and because of that, we’re able to put more on his plate each week.”
Columbus East’s Kyson Villarreal, left, is brought down by Seymour’s Aaron Holt Friday at Bulleit Stadium in Seymour.
The Tribune file photo
Meanwhile, East’s offense bounced back from the shutout loss to North by putting a season-high 26 points on the board at Seymour. Unfortunately for the Olympians, they had trouble stopping the Owls offense in a 41-26 Hoosier Hills Conference defeat.
“I think we got better all around,” East coach Eddie Vogel said. “I felt like Friday really was the first time that we competed for 48 minutes. I know we gave up a lot of points, but Seymour’s offense is probably as good as we’ve seen. They have a talented group of receivers, a really good quarterback and their line is good.”
After sharing snaps with junior Zach Foster the first two weeks, sophomore Kyson Villarreal went most of the way at quarterback for the Olympians at Seymour.
“We still have some packages for Zach,” Vogel said. “It’s just the way the game kind of unfolded. It was really pretty tight, and Kyson was doing a great job of leading our offense. He’s a running threat, and we need to have that.”
Villarreal ran for more than 160 yards against the Owls.
“It was encouraging for us to be able to run the football,” Vogel said. “I thought we did a good job of controlling the clock. That was kind of our plan going in. We felt we needed to control the clock on them, and we did that. We just still have some issues finishing drives. We had a drive inside the 5 that we didn’t finish on, and we had a touchdown taken off the board on an illegal-man-downfield, so we left some points on the board.”
East (0-3, 0-1) travels to Jennings County (2-1, 0-1) this week, while North (2-1) travels to Roncalli (1-2). We’ll have more on those games later in the week.
