Before a big senior night crowd, Talawanda and Edgewood put on a show, battling back and forth all night with the game not decided until an Edgewood 40-yard field goal attempt sailed wide right, enabling the host Braves to dance all over the field with a 28-26 victory.
“It was hard to sit and watch that field goal, it looked pretty good from my angle,” Talawanda High coach JD Vonderheide said. “This was big for us since we are a program trying to come back and (Edgewood) has all that tradition but we gutted it out. We found a way to win.”
Despite 220 yards rushing and three touchdowns by junior Maurice Thomas, the Braves trailed after Edgewood rattled off 19 unanswered points in the third quarter.
Trace Reynolds completed 14 of 27 passies for 136 yards and threw for three scores, all in the second half, as the Cougars rallied from a 14-0 halftime deficit.
Edgewood led 26-22 with under two minutes left and had a fourth and 1 on its own 41, but Reynolds was stuffed for no gain on a quarterback keeper.
From there, Talawanda rode the arm of Conner Scott (4 of 9, 54 yards, one score) to get the ball to the Edgewood 11. On second down, Scottt rolled out and found Rob Jones, who corralled the ball and rumbled in for the game winner with 1 minute left.
Reynolds completed two long passes to Tanner Wright (3 catches for 33 yards, two TDs) on the ensuing drive but an intentional grounding pushed the ball back and the last-second field goal was long enough, just missing to the right.
“We came out and played a good second half … but we left some points out there in the first half that would have made the difference,” Edgewood coach Scott Clemmons said. “We had the ball inside the 30 three times in the first half and didn’t score and if we score on just one of those possessions that would have been enough. I am proud of these boys, they haven’t lost their fight, we are just not finishing games.”
Talawanda (4-4, 2-3 SWOC, racked up 399 yards of offense, 247 coming in the first half, while Edgewood (1-7, 1-4) totaled 269 of its 362 total yards in the final two quarters.
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