BLACKSVILLE — When he was an all-state football player at Clay-Battelle, game day Fridays meant Aaron LaPoe was popping in an AC/DC cassette tape, the one that had been passed down to him by his older brother.
Some 20 years later, LaPoe again found himself driving down Route 7, only this time as a rookie head coach for the Cee-Bees.
“I put on AC/DC and it was like my whole life just passed before my eyes,” he said after the Cee-Bees demolished Hundred 44-6 in LaPoe’s debut. “All the (state) playoff plaques we have listed on the wall out there, I remember watching some of those teams when I was in the third grade.”
He said Friday’s victory was living out a childhood dream, and then as those AC/DC guitar riffs started hitting as LaPoe got further down the road, so too did emotion.
“I started bawling,” he said.
Yeah, there’s hardly any other feeling like that first-ever win.
The Cee-Bees (1-0) handed it to LaPoe with a mixture of big plays and capitalizing on Hundred’s mistakes.
Maverick Gum rushed for 91 yards and three touchdowns, while first-year starting quarterback Braden Ponceroff added two more TDs and accounted for 18 of Clay-Battelle’s points.
“I would say we’re still a project,” said Ponceroff, who scored on a 12-yard run in the first quarter and then took a 55-yard punt return to the house in the third quarter. “We’re still putting some pieces together. We’ve got new coaches, new offense and defense, but we’re getting closer to that finish line.”
After telling his life-flashback story, LaPoe was all about crediting his players.
“This isn’t about me, I had my time,” he said. “Outside of a couple of plays in the first half where we didn’t have much effort, I thought our kids are continuing to buy into trying to play with perfect effort and physicality. That’s what we’ve been preaching.”
C-B held the Hornets (0-1) to just 149 yards of offense and forced three turnovers.
Ponceroff’s first score was set up after a bad snap on a Hundred punt set up the Cee-Bees at the Hornets’ 15-yard line.
Combined with Gum, the duo accounted for 199 yards of offense and five scores. Ponceroff also had two two-point conversion runs, threw a two-point conversion pass and kicked two extra points.
“Maverick does a little bit of everything for us,” LaPoe said. “Braden is beginning to put a lot of nice things together, too. His kicking, we have a specialist coming in every week to work with him.”
Caleb Snodgrass finished off C-B’s scoring with a 13-yard run early in the fourth quarter for the final score.
Hundred quarterback Trey Huggins scored on a 1-yard sneak to cut the lead to 14-6 with 7:59 remaining in the second quarter, but the Hornets would get no closer.
And LaPoe had his first win.
“I’m grateful to have been a part of it,” Ponceroff said. “We knew he really wanted it. He was a little more focused this week than he usually is.
“Our team is very aware of what he accomplished here as a player, the 5,600 yards and the state record for carries. He’s a legend to us, so to be able to go out and get him his first win, yeah that feels great.”
Box score
Hundred 0 6 0 0—6
Clay-Battelle 14 8 15 7—44
SCORING SUMMARY
C-B—Braden Ponceroff 12 run (run failed)
C-B—Maverick Gum 1 run (Ponceroff run)
Hun—Trey Huggins 1 run (run failed)
C-B—Gum 10 run (Ponceroff run)
C-B—Gum 5 run (Landon Savage pass from Ponceroff)
C-B—Ponceroff 55 punt return (Poncerff kick)
C-B—Caleb Snodgrass 13 run (Ponceroff kick)
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING: Clay-Battelle—Gum 10-91 3TD, Snodgrass 7-53 TD, Ponceroff 2-19 TD, T.J. Barr 1-5. Hundred—Huggins 12-29 TD, Jaxon Huggins 13-17, Joey Wade 5-24, Colt Sandy 1-5, Tyler Sleeth 5-(-8), Team 2-(-25).
PASSING: Clay-Battelle—Ponceroff 4-9 89. Hundred—T. Huggins 11-20-2 109, Sandy 1-1 1.
RECEIVING: Clay-Battelle—Damion Toothman 1-47, Tyson Price 1-10, Landon Savage 2-32. Hundred—Wade 6-54, Sandy 2-23, Riley Halford 1-25, Sleeth 2-1, J. Huggins 1-7.
