West Orange football overcomes early deficit, tops Evans 28-18

After a slow start on offense and a couple of mistakes on defense, the Warriors of West Orange High went down 12-0 in the second quarter to the visitors from Evans High, but that didn't mean the boys of fall from West Orange County started to unravel. No, quite the opposite, actually, much to the delight of Warriors coach Geno Thompson, his young ball club kept fighting for one another and didn't panic and pulled off the 28-18 comeback win. 

"I was just super excited at the way that we kind of handled the adversity and how we never quit, never turned on each other, were always was uplifting, always positive and fought till the very end," Thompson said. "The way the game flowed ... we scored 21 points in less than three minutes, and we went into halftime up 21-12. During that whole first quarter, the kids never backed down. ... It was definitely a great win for the program and I thought the kids played extremely well in terms of just fighting for each other and never quitting. Our motto is always sacrifice me for we and these kids live it. So, that's what makes me proud as a coach."

Following a touchdown, to cut the Trojans' lead by more than half, West Orange went for and recovered an onside kick before taking the lead in the game and never looking back.

"That turnaround was really all set up with our special forces, which is what we call our special teams unit," Thompson said. "We saw on film how they had kickoff returns set up and thought there was an opportunity to do a quick little stampede kick, which is basically an onside kick right up the middle of the field. Because of the way their alignment was, we were able to recover it. That was a great opportunity, because we had just ended up scoring the drive before and then we were able to recover that and our offense went back on the field immediately and we scored again."

The Warriors' second-quarter run wouldn't stop at just the offense and special teams; however, the stout West Orange defense also came up big at the end of the first half, as senior defensive back/linebacker Dylan Hoskins scooped up a fumble and took it to the house to give the home side a 21-12 lead going into the halftime break.

"Dylan Hoskins, our outside linebacker/nickel hybrid defender, we call Warrior, had a really good game for us last night," Thompson said. "He's the one who had the scoop-and-score on a bad snap that was a big moment in the game. He's been lights out for us."

Overall, Thompson was happy with his team's performance on both sides of the ball with his defensive leaders from 2024 — Chakai Scott, Devonte Anderson, Mathus Kaminskiy Cordeiro and Nolan Turner — stepping up in the early portion of 2025 and his young offense overcoming a slow start against a good Evans defense. 

"(Evans) is massive up front ... so they were giving us some fit issues running football in the beginning, but the offense was good about not pointing fingers and continuing to grind," Thompson said. "We slowly wore down their defense and were able to start establishing the run game and then using the RPO game off of it, we were able to put together some big plays. I have full faith in our QB A.J. (Chung) and the rest of our offense; they did a great job. A lot of that has to do with our offensive coordinator Narlin Clancy, who has done a great job calling our offense and never losing composure ... he's grown a lot as a coach and I'm super excited for this season, for this team and where they're gonna take us."