Friday night’s contest started out promising for the Jefferson Cougars as they struck first on a 9 yard touchdown pass from quarterback Andrew King to Derrod Doleman. Not to be out matched, Musselman using a mixture of run and play action passing, marched down the field and eventually punched the ball in the end zone with a one yard Josh Ferguson touchdown.

As the game’s events unfolded, it became obvious that it was just Musselman’s and in particular, Josh Ferguson’s night. Musselman would later score twice more in the first quarter on a Caleb Dembeck 1 yard dive into the endzone and an explosive 83 yard run by Ferguson.

Like a fly at a barbeque, Jefferson would simply not go away that easily. Early in the second quarter Jefferson’s Andrew King connected with Tanner Cantrell for a 16 yard touchdown reception making the score 20-14, Musselman. Unfortunately for Jefferson that would be their last score for a while as Musselman went on to dominate the majority of the game with their combination of ground and pound and play action passing.

Musselman’s offense quickly responded with a 35 yard touchdown run by Cody Spinks and later another Ferguson touchdown, this time of the 39 yard variety. Quarterback Caleb Dembeck finished Musselman’s scoring for the half with a 28 yard touchdown pass to receiver Darrin Zombro. The score at the half was 41-14, Applemen.

To Jefferson’s credit they came out from half time fighting, but it wasn’t enough this night, as the Applemen stuck with their rush heavy strategy, and racked up two more Josh Ferguson touchdowns in the process. Ferguson finished off his impressive night with 185 rushing yards on 11 attempts with 5 touchdowns, and averaged a staggering 16 yards per rushing attempt. And that was the difference between the two teams Friday night. Musselman rushed for a combined 374 yards, which is impressive at any level, college, pro or high school.

Usually the team that controls the ground wins the game and that’s exactly what happened Friday night as Jefferson dropped to a 1-5 record on the season losing to Musselman with a final score of 55-21.

Mussleman moves on to face Hedgesville next week after improving their record to 4-2 against Jefferson. When asked for comment Jefferson acting head coach Craig Hunter had a positive outlook on the game saying, “The kids didn’t quit, they played hard and that’s all we asked them to do we use the same motto from the movie Red Tails, to the last second, to the last play, to the last minute, we fight, we fight, we fight.” That’s exactly what Jefferson did, but it was not enough Friday. Jefferson’s fight will have to wait as they’re off next week. Their next game is Oct. 12 when they make the trip to Keyser to take on the Golden Tornado at 7 p.m.