Monterey Football Opens Season With Blowout Win

By: Scott Wilson

MONTEREY, TN – Prior to opening the 2020 football season Friday night, Monterey High School coach Scott Hughes had some questions about just what his young team could and couldn’t do. The Wildcats had a difficult preseason, battling the obstacles posed by COVID-19. That even included the cancellation of their first two games of the regular season.

The delay did not seem to bother the Wildcats. Monterey scored on the ground, in the air and on defense Friday as it rolled to an easy 44-8 rout of Red Boiling Springs.

“Some of the questions we had before the season have been answered for us,” said Hughes. “I think our kids played hard tonight and that was one of my worries because when you practice sometimes you don’t get the best effort. Sometimes things just don’t go the way you want them to.”

However, things seemed to go exactly the way Monterey wanted against the Bulldogs. The Wildcats scored 22 points in the first 7 minutes of the first period, thanks mostly to the effort of standout sophomore tailback Mason Bowman.

After Monterey recovered the opening kickoff, Bowman capped the Wildcats’ first scoring drive with a 19-yard run. Cayden Jones took in the two-point conversion and MHS led 8-0 at the 11:19 mark. After forcing the Bulldogs to punt, Monterey scored again on a 43-yard touchdown run by Bowman. Matthew Montgomery found Logan Sparks in the end zone for the conversion to make it 16-0 with 8:12 on the clock.

Bowman’s third score came just 90 seconds later when he capped another Monterey scoring drive with a 40-yard scamper. The two-point conversion failed, but the Wildcats led 22-0.

“Tonight, our kids played extremely hard,” Hughes said. “I thought we were pretty physical, but we still have so far to go, so much to work on.”

The Wildcats were not done as they scored 16 more points in the first half, mostly still in the first period, to put the game away. Monterey got a 33-yard touchdown pass from Montgomery to Chandler Bowden to make it 28-0.

“We’ve got some guys that can do some different things on offense,” Hughes explained. “We’ve got some guys that give us a little more speed than we’ve had in the past, we just need to figure out the best way to utilize them. We’ve got to figure out our identity.”

The Wildcats’ kept the pressure on. Before the horn sounded for halftime, Monterey got another touchdown from Montgomery. This time he found Carter Charlton for a 34-yard strike. MHS also got two safeties, helping them take a 38-8 lead into intermission.

“This defensive unit will definitely play hard,” Hughes said. “I hope to see some things on film with our angles and our pursuit, and hopefully we’re where we were supposed to be. It looked like it live, but I am interested to see if we were where we were supposed to be.”

Monterey’s final score came late in the third period when Montgomery found Jones for a 53-yard scoring strike as the speedster outran the Red Boiling Springs defense to post the 44-8 final margin.

The Wildcats hit the road next week to begin a four-game swing away from MHS. The Wildcats will visit Harriman for a 7:30 p.m. matchup, and then follow that with away games at Pickett County, Jackson County and Jo Byrns.