Mount de Sales offense comes alive for Homecoming, Cavs defeat CFCA Lancers 31-7

The Mount de Sales Cavaliers feasted on offense to celebrate their Homecoming night, as MDS took down Central Fellowship Christian Academy 31-7 Friday night in front of a crowd that needed overflow parking on Cavalier Drive.

“We’d lost homecoming two years in a row. Mount de Sales is a place where Homecoming is a big deal. When you’re 150 years old, there’s a lot of people that come back,” Mount de Sales head coach Gray Yates said with a smile after the game. “Now that we can give them a product and we’re getting things moving in the right direction, we’re super excited.”

Sophomore quarterback Zavion Deshazier led the way for the Cavs, taking control on offense as a dual threat to keep the Lancers off-balance. He routinely connected with receivers Davien Williams and Joshua Green for chunk plays and made things happen with his legs when nobody was open.

“It’s gotta be Zay, I think,” Yates said after the game when asked to pick a standout player. “We knew he had talent, he’s shown us, but it’s probably the first time he’s took a ball game and said, ‘I’ll get it, coach.’ As a sophomore, super proud of that.”

The team had a well-rounded performance in the win. The offense was a welcome change for the Cavaliers, who haven’t seen much offense in recent contests. MDS lost to Gatewood 46-20 last week after it fell into a 25-0 hole at the half.

“We’ve had two or three rough weeks in a row where we hadn’t done anything, so we kind of got some tricks in early,” Yates said. “They’re an aggressive group, and they play hard over at Central Fellowship. We were able to handle that early and play off that, and they just executed what we wanted to do the rest of the night.”

The tricks Yates referred to were effective. A first quarter double-pass for a touchdown and a fourth quarter triple-handoff into a pass for a big gain caught CFCA flat-footed.

“When you start struggling a little bit, you want to be a little creative. It loosens the team up a little, they’re excited to run them instead of the same stuff we normally run,” Yates said.

As for the Lancers, the heart of the offense ran through quarterback Judson Walls. The signal caller carried the ball on nearly every play.

“Judson’s toughness is probably his best quality, he just competes relentlessly,” CFCA head coach Jake Walls said. “Obviously I’m his dad, too, so that makes me proud. We really didn’t intend for him to be handling the ball every play when we started our season, but we started in our Wing-T and it wasn’t working. He’s shown a lot of toughness to get 30 carries a night.”

While the offense had trouble moving the ball until late, the defense made a few stops early to keep the score at 17-0 heading into halftime. CFCA was also short a handful of players, according to the head coach.

“We had some players that stepped up, so our depth might be the takeaway tonight,” Jake Walls said.

Both teams were young, but the Class 4A/3A Cavs had more physicality. The win was important to Yates for development reasons, too — plenty of underclassmen played and showed discipline on the field.

“We’ve got 36 on the roster, and 26 of them are underclassmen. They’re hungry. How good we are, how good we’re becoming, we’re still working on everything, but it’s important to them. And that passion is important to our culture,” Yates said. “Right now those things are bigger than anything else.”

The game was not mistake-free, of course. Few games are. Deshazier threw an interception in the third quarter, and CFCA drove down the field consistently for a touchdown in the fourth quarter.

“He threw the pick in the third, but he was trying to make a play, and that was Judson too. Judson Walls and every Walls human being that has stepped on the field has been a stud,” Yates said. “Our mistakes came trying to make plays, but we’re working hard.”

Mount de Sales faces off with FPD next week in a big local matchup, while the Lancers travel to Dublin to take on Trinity Christian.