BLUEFIELD — Winning 17-0 against county rival Princeton on Friday night was good enough for Bluefield High School football coach Fred Simon. That said, he saw multiple needs for improvement from his Beavers.

“We can play better. We played well enough to win,” Simon said. “As long as we can find a way to pull it off, I’m OK with it. I’m pleased with the win, but I’m disappointed with some things. Too many penalties. We’ve got to cut that out. And we’ve got to execute.

“So we’ll get that right, and we’ll see how it goes.”

The Beavers improved to 2-0 with their second straight shutout at Mitchell Stadium, but was penalized 11 times for 88 yards. Princeton couldn’t take advantage of it, though. The Tigers earned three first downs in the entire game.

Princeton started out at a disadvantage when senior workhorse Tevin Allen was hurt on the opening kickoff. He returned several times to the field, only to leave again. Except for one dazzling 27-yard burst, he would not get untracked against the Beavers.

Princeton head coach Ted Spadaro said, “Tevin, going in, had been hurt with that ankle. Then, he got a good hit on the (opening) kickoff return and was out. ... He played less than half the game.”

To compensate, the coach pulled various formations out of the playbook, including wildcat looks, rollout passes and man-in-motion handoffs.

“What happens is, you’ve got a puzzle, and one piece of it is gone. So now, you’ve got to find two pieces to take care of that one. And that’s not easy to do.” He said the task was compounded by injuries to Tré Hopkins and Dalton Christian.

The Bluefield defense again limited its opponent to less than 100 yards of total offense. Princeton gained 64 yards on 24 rushes and 18 yards on four pass completions.

Keith Ferguson was one of the leaders of the Bluefield defense.

“Each time, it’s always a contact game, always hard-hitting,” he said. “Everybody wants to come out and prove a point. It’s a battle of Bluefield-Princeton. Everybody wants to come out and put pads on each other.

“It’s always a big-hitting game, I’ll call it. A number of big hits.”

Ferguson said when he hears the crowd respond to a defensive play, “It motivates me. It motivates me to go in and do it again. I try my best to get the crowd involved. I try to put on a show for the crowd, but I try to do it the right way — to do my job.”

Ferguson said about the shutouts, “You always want to have a good defense, to make a point. If they can’t score, they can’t win.”

Princeton started the game on offense, but on its third play, Byron Steptoe intercepted Corey Quick’s pass. Neither team could make much headway in a scoreless first quarter.

Ferguson said, “I just think it was nerves. When it’s a big rivalry game, you don’t want to come out and be the first to mess up. ... But once we all get out there, and we talk, we’re all family, we’ve got each other’s back ... so it’s fine.”

Spadaro said, “I think both sides knew they were in a game. Bluefield came out stroking in that first quarter and started hitting hard. And then, we had to take it to them, also. If not, that game would have ended up early, in the early part of that first quarter.”

“We knew we had to hang tough. Give credit to both teams; they played tough tonight.”

The Beavers’ first scoring drive consisted of three runs up the middle by Trey Williams, followed by a 27-yard field goal by Justin Mariotti.

The next Princeton foray ended with a fumble recovered by Bluefield's C.J. Manns at midfield.

The Beavers used five plays to reach the endzone, with most of the yards coming via the air.

Steptoe benefited from one of Bluefield's favorite pass plays — flooding the left side with receivers and passing a sure-fire ball to Steptoe with a complex web of blockers in front of him. He had no trouble reaching the endzone on a 20-yard scoring pass from quarterback Levi Beckett.

Bluefield picked up 10 first downs in the first half.

The entire third quarter produced five punts and just one first down, and that was a keeper by Beckett that barely got past the sticks.

The Beavers overcame two costly penalties early in the fourth quarter. A 40-yard completion from Beckett to freshman wideout David Edwards set the Beavers up at the Princeton 28.

Brad Fox took care of the ball from there, rushing four straight times to reach the goal line with 8:26 left in the game.

Fox said, “We were just trying to get yards. I was driving, the line was blocking just real good. They just kept giving (the ball) to me, and I tried as hard as I could. We all did.”

“If they’re going to give me the ball, I’m going to try as hard as I can, and see what happens.”

The 5-foot-9 junior led all rushers with 95 yards on 19 carries. Bluefield gained 219 yards on the ground and 124 through the air, even though Beckett was an uncharacteristic 6-for-16 passing. He added 56 rushing yards on 10 carries.

Quick, still settling in as Princeton quarterback, was 4-for-14 for 18 yards. Allen had 43 yards rushing on 11 rushes.

Spadaro called the number of freshman runner Tahj Johnson three times. He gained 2 yards.

“I thought he did well,” Spadaro said. “You know, this was a big game for a little freshman going in there. ... You just can’t throw a young man like that out into a big game like this ... I don’t do anybody like that. I just gave him a few plays at a time to get him to feel his way around.”

Simon tried to establish a rhythm to the offense, but it wasn’t easy on Friday, particularly in the second half.

“We would see stuff like that all night, then we’d get a penalty,” Simon said. “It’s not like we couldn’t do certain things, but we can’t go hitting people in the back. And we clipped, and clipped. We did it.”

“We’ve just got to get in sync. ... . We didn’t get that done. We know what happened there, and we know what we need to do to correct it. We’ll do our best. That’s why we coach, to try to get that corrected for next week.”

Fox said, “We were ready for the game, we just had mental lapses here and there. But by next week we should be good, and we’ll try harder mentally.”

He said about Princeton, “They’re a good team. They hit hard. We tried to hit them hard back. It was just a good ballgame all the way around.”

Spadaro said, “You’ve got to give credit to Bluefield. They hung in there tough. My team, did, too. I’m proud of my team. They didn’t quit. Neither team quit. ...

“We’ve got a lot more work to do, but I saw the light at the end of the tunnel there tonight, and that means a lot to us.”

The Beavers’ next game is Thursday at 7 p.m. in Fairlea, taking on the Greenbrier East Spartans.

Princeton will return to Hunnicutt Stadium, hosting Mountain State Athletic Conference powerhouse Capital, at 7:30 p.m. Friday unless the schools’ administrations decide to change the day, Spadaro said.

Spadaro said, “There’s more positives tonight than there were last Friday night. If we’d played this well last Friday night, we’d have won. And that’s true — but we didn’t. Tonight we did. And we hope to improve as time goes on, because we’ll be playing the No. 1, 2 (or) No. 3 team in the state next weekend in Capital. It don’t get any easier.”

Spadaro’s closing comment Friday night was, “Freddy Simon showed a lot of class.”

Simon said, “I feel the same about Princeton. We’re Mercer County. I want us to beat them when we play. But, I know a lot of people over there, just like (at) Graham. I wish them all the best.

“I wish Coach Spadaro and his whole staff, everything. I like their players; they’re good kids. I wish them all the luck. The feeling’s mutual.”

— Contact Tom Bone at

tbone@bdtonline.com



At Mitchell Stadium

Princeton..............................0    0   0   0  —    0

Bluefield...............................0   10   7   0  —  17

Second Quarter

Bluefield — Justin Mariotti 27 FG, 11:06

Bluefield — Byron Steptoe 20 pass from Levi Beckett (Mariotti kick), 7:37

Third Quarter

Bluefield — Brad Fox 4 run (Mariotti kick), 8:26

———

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS

RUSHING — Princeton, Tevin Allen 11-43, Corey Quick 4-12, O.B. Pannell 4-8, Tahj Johnson 3-2, Dalton Christian 1-1, Brett Carroll 1-(–2). Bluefield, Brad Fox 19-95, Levi Beckett 10-56, Byron Steptoe 6-35, Trey Williams 9-33, C.J. Manns 1-1, team 1-(–1).

PASSING — Princeton, Corey Quick 4-14-18-0-1 intc. Bluefield, Beckett 6-16-124-1 TD-0 intc.

RECEIVING — Princeton, Pannell 2-13, T.J. Lankford 1-3, Allen 1-2. Bluefield, Joe Woodrum 2-56, Steptoe 3-28, David Edwards 1-40.

———

TEAM STATISTICS

    Pctn    Blfd

First Downs    3    15

Rushes-Yards    24-64    46-219

Passing Yards    18    124

Comp-Att-Int    4-14-1    6-16-0

Penalties-Yards    5-44    11-88