The sun shined on the freshly cut grass on Kugler Field Saturday as the Washington Youth Football League kicked off the season in a near-perfect surrounding.
However, the only thing that looked better then the serene setting was the running of Terry Moore, as the running back on the Washington Panthers’ 7-8-year old football team, ran for two scores and caught an 18-yard TD pass from QB Hayes Pippen to lead his team to a 30-0 victory over the Washington Eagles.
“(Terry) played like I thought he would,” Panthers coach Ray Pippen said. “He’s going to be our primary carrier all year. He’s got good speed, good vision and he plays hard.”
The Panthers (1-0) got off to a hot start as they took an 8-0 lead in the first quarter on a Moore TD run.
The Panthers struck again at the 6:47 mark in the second quarter as Pippen found Moore on the right side of the field and looked on as he dashed into the end zone.
“That’s a play we’ve worked on a couple of times in practice,” Pippen said.
The Panthers took a 22-0 lead when they turned an Eagles (0-1) fumble into a quick score right before the end of the first half.
The Eagles played strong on both sides of the ball but on Saturday couldn’t match the consistency of their foes.
“We did pretty good on defense but we just need to work on our blocking,” Eagles coach Greg Warren said. “Rickey Gibbs, our quarterback did a good job of handing off the ball and Aven Harris, our throwing quarterback, made some nice passes but the defense got in the way of them. Messiah Levy, played well on offense and defense.”
At the end of the day both teams were just excited to finally play their first game of the year.
“The kids were real excited. They were so excited they wouldn’t listen to me,” Warren joked. “Everything in practice it seems as if they forgot, that’s how excited they were.”
Pippen said his team was equally excited.
“I think everybody had those opening day nerves,” Pippen said. “But, they all had a blast. It was a lot of fun.”