Cardinal Win Brings Perspective

FARMINGTON — Coach J.R. Eldridge celebrated his first win in his first game as head coach of the Farmington football team by defeating Rogers Heritage, 40-21, Friday.

He was pleased with the efforts put forth both by his assistant coaches and the team carrying out their assignments.

“I feel like our coaching staff did great in presenting the game plan to them all week,” Eldridge said. “They were really able to execute it on Friday night.”

Senior “situation quarterback” Myles Harvey shone out with a particularly effective performance in spot duty. Harvey ran the football 11 times for 125 yards punctuated by a 55-yard touchdown jaunt which gave the Cardinals a 40-14 fourth quarter lead.

“When we want to run the football and pound it in there he’s our guy,” Eldridge said.

Eldridge praised Harvey for doing the job of developing a vision for the role and demonstrating quality leadership on the field explaining that whatever role Harvey finds himself in, he’s going to go after that with purpose.

Sophomore starting quarterback Cameron Vanzant also excelled in winning his first varsity start.

Vanzant passed for 240 yards and 4 touchdowns while completing 22-of-28 passes with no interceptions and had 4 rushes for 25 yards.

“He had a lot of poise out there. Our upper classmen that surround him helped him a lot by also making plays when he distributed the ball to them,” Eldridge said.

The head coach was quick to point out that goes a long ways in helping a young quarterback not feel like he has to try to make things happen on his own.

Vanzant’s passes were on target and the Cardinal receiving corps consistently made the catches. Devonte Donovan reeled in a pair of touchdown passes. Peyton Funk caught a touchdown pass in between two defensive backs, one of two scoring receptions he made on the night.

Defensively, the Cardinals looked in fine form by holding Heritage to 227 yards of total offense, 52 of which came on a single play with Eli Craig breaking a 52-yard touchdown run in the fourth.

“We got them off the field. On third down they were 1-for-11 which is a real unbelievable statistic,” Eldridge said. “That says something about our defense.”

Eldridge introduced a new defensive scheme this year and was pleased with not allowing the War Eagles to make positive gains on first down. The tone for each series was set by the Cardinal defense not their opponent and Eldridge praised the scout team which modeled the War Eagle offense in practice coming up to the contest.

“We were able to create three turnovers and we didn’t turn the ball over. Being plus three in the turnover margin was huge for us,” Eldridge said.

Walker McCumber and Sam Wells each made an interception while Andrew Disheroon caused a fumble which the Cardinals recovered by hitting Heritage quarterback Carter Hensley on a blindside blitz.

“I’m proud of our coaching staff and our players. They’re really buying into what we’ve been doing,” Eldridge said.

He said the win puts all their hard work since he took over the program in January and especially over the spring and summer into perspective — noting that even when a team loses they still have to keep doing those things but a win tends to bring the big picture into focus.

“Our players were able to see that result,” Eldridge said. “Hopefully, that will lead to some confidence. We’ve got to create a habit of doing the things we need to do.”

This Friday Farmington plays host to rival Prairie Grove in the annual ‘Battle of 62’ gridiron contest with kickoff scheduled for 7 p.m. at Cardinal Stadium.