In the return of the Battle of College Park last year, Bishop Moore rallied back to win a 24-23 classic. The Hornets would not need a comeback this season to win their second game in the series against Edgewater that dates back to 1959.
Bishop Moore (3-0) shook off a shaky first quarter and took advantage of Eagles’ (1-2) mistakes to take the rivalry matchup 27-7. The big play ability of running back Marcus Williams carried the Hornets.
Williams put the first three touchdowns on the board and head coach Matt Hedrick could not say enough about the senior after the win.
“Marcus is our guy,” said Hedrick. ”He’s one of the greatest kids we’ve ever had at Bishop Moore. He’s got a fight and a will that you don’t see very often in a young man. That’s why he’s so effective.”
No sequence summed up Edgewater’s misfortunes more than one coming in the middle of the 3rd quarter. The Eagles had a 50 yard pass called back by penalty and on the next quarterback Cortez Pembleton was intercepted. Bishop Moore followed with a screen pass to Williams that went 27 yards for the score.
“We took advantage of those opportunities,” said Hedrick about the three-play swing. “That was big for us because if we would have squandered them, it would have been a much tighter game.”
Pembleton had an inconsistent evening for Edgewater. The junior scrambled to keep drives alive, but finished just 12/25 with three interceptions through the air.
Penalties doomed the Eagles from the start. Overall, they committed 11 penalties.
Edgewater’s only score was largely due to two Bishop Moore penalties. After pass interference and roughing the passer penalties back to back, the Eagles hit on a 13 yard TD pass to Davonte Key late in the fourth.
“I was very surprised with the penalties,” said Hedrick. “It just surprised me that there were that many penalties. Some of them they wouldn’t even tell us what they were, so I don’t know what they were.”
For the second year in a row, school spirit was on full display for the two schools separated by less than a mile on Edgewater Drive. The Hornets’ band, players, and fans walked from their campus to the stadium.
Hedrick says having this rivalry back in consecutive seasons after a 22 year hiatus forms a great connection between the past and present.
“It means a lot to the community. It means a lot to all the guys that played before on both sides of the ball I think from that perspective, it’s a really neat thing for the community to do.”