An intra-county matchup in Central Baldwin pitted Baldwin County High School against Elberta on Friday, and it was the Tigers who emerged with a 26-0 victory.

With the visitors entering the final stretch of their regular season, Baldwin County picked up its second win this year, as quarterback Ray Johnson accounted for three touchdown passes despite the Tigers’ kicking struggles.

"We came out, executed and did what we needed to do,” Baldwin County head coach Andrew Davis said. “A lot of respect for Coach Williams. His offense is the most unique that you’ll see, so for us to keep the zero up, that was great. We executed offensively. Obviously with the shortened second half, we would have liked to put more points up, but proud of our guys tonight. It was a good win.”

Despite the loss on senior night, Elberta Head Coach Joel Williams was proud of his team, noting the injuries to their roster.

“We played our tails off, man. We executed,” Coach Williams said. “You gotta realize now, we’re playing with no quarterbacks. We don’t have any healthy quarterbacks in our football program, and so we put in a whole offense, a lot of formation shifts and those kinds of things. The oldest skill guy I had on the field was a tenth grader. All the rest of them were ninth graders, but I mean, I was so proud of our football team, man. We played our tails off tonight.”

TIGERS BEAT WARRIORS ON THE ROAD

After both sides traded stops on defense to begin the game, Baldwin County opened up the scoring with a touchdown pass to Tigers senior receiver Ashton Cox but missed the two-point conversion to give Baldwin County a 6-0 lead at the 10:28 mark of the first quarter. 

Elberta then attempted a field goal but missed from around 21 yards out shortly after.

In the second quarter, junior Skylen Andrews breezed past multiple Elberta defenders to score from roughly 70 yards out. The ensuing PAT attempt was good, making it 13-0 Tigers with 11:21 to go in the second quarter.

With 8:21 left in the second quarter, Cox hauled in another touchdown pass to give Baldwin County a 19-0 lead over Elberta, with the ensuing kick missing the uprights. 

Later, sophomore Ja’meir Gaines snagged a touchdown of his own to make it 26-0 after a successful PAT, a scoreline that would hold the rest of the way.

LOOKING AHEAD

With the win, Baldwin County improves to 2-6 overall and 1-5 in region play. The Tigers have two games left on their schedule, returning home next Friday to host Murphy.

“We got to get healthy,” Davis said. “We’ve got five seniors that are out for the year already and others that are in different stages of coming back from injury, so we have to do our best to get healthy as we can, try to beat Murphy on Senior Night if possible, and then go to UMS (Wright), so a couple tough tests left to go and try to finish the season on a high note.”

Meanwhile, Elberta falls to a 1-8 overall record and 0-6. Next up for the Warriors, they finish the regular season with a road trip to Bound on Friday.

“Just like any other week,” Williams said on how they are preparing for their last game. “We just go, we game plan all weekend and we go prepare, and we try to just play the next play and enjoy the journey.”