Chancellor crushes Eastern View

Both teams made plenty of mistakes when Chancellor traveled to Eastern View for Friday’s Battlefield District opener.
The Cyclones never capitalized, but the Chargers did, showing why they are the defending district champs and perhaps the favorite to win it again.
Having Micah Cunningham running the Charger offense didn’t hurt either. Cunningham carried the ball 25 times for 243 yards and four touchdowns and Chancellor rolled to a 42-0 victory.
“I was excited to get back out there,” Cunningham, who missed the Chargers loss to Riverbend two weeks ago with an injury, said. The holes were wide open and I was just running. We got to defend our district championship and this is how we start doing it.”
The Chargers (2-2, 1-0 Battlefield District) turned the ball over four times, including two first-half interceptions thrown by Cunningham, and were flagged seven times for 55 yards. But Eastern View’s offense couldn’t sustain a drive after forcing the turnovers, partly because the Cyclones (2-2, 0-1) turned it over three times themselves.
“We made mistakes and we let that one get out of control,” Eastern View coach Greg Hatfield said. “We don’t like this feeling and we’re not going to stand for it.”
For the third time in four games, the opening kickoff caused problems for the Cyclones and led to Eastern View starting the game in a hole. After giving up returns for touchdowns to start the games against Culpeper and Louisa, Eastern View elected to receive the opening kick.
But that didn’t work out well either. Drayton Shanks had trouble fielding the kick, then fumbled the ball as a group of Chargers pulled him down. Chancellor recovered and had to go only nine yards for its first score.
The special teams gaffe set up the first of three two-yard touchdown runs by Cunningham in the first half.
“Obviously Drayton is a playmaker for us,” Hatfield said. “We hadn’t had that problem on special teams yet, but we spot them six again. We fought through that and it was 6-0 at the end of the first quarter and we were in it, but we didn’t hit on plays that could have got us going. We had the defense stretched and it’s our job to make the plays.”
Eastern View moved the ball at times in the first half — quarterback Simon Pendleton threw for 68 of his 74 passing yards in the first quarter — but miscues kept the Cyclones from sustaining any drives and turnovers gave the Chargers a short field as they built a 19-0 lead at halftime.
“We had some opportunities to score and we had some opportunities early that we couldn’t take advantage of that could have made a difference,” Hatfield said. “You get those opportunities and you got to take advantage of that stuff and we didn’t.”
Eastern View entered the contest eager to prove it could hang with the top programs in the district after recording a 7-3 record last year as an independent. The Cyclones know they didn’t make a good impression in their first Battlefield game, but still believe they can recover and compete against the top-half of the district.
“We’re going to keep working on it,” Hatfield said. “We sure as Hell ain’t going to quit. It’s going to be easy for naysayers to say stuff now, but that’s why naysayers are naysayers. We’re going to come back and go to work on Monday. We’ll lick our wounds a little bit, but we’re going to show up and play next week against King George.”

Chancellor 42, Eastern View 0
Chancellor 6 13 16 7 - 42
Eastern View 0 0 0 0 - 0
Scoring summary
First quarter
CHS – Micah Cunningham 2-yard run. PAT blocked. 11:10
Second quarter
CHS – Cunningham 2-yard run. PAT blocked 8:38
CHS – Cunningham 2-yard run. PAT kick Franklin Kokoneshi. 0:25
Third quarter
CHS – Aquiyl Randall 19-yard run. PAT kick Kokoneshi 8:13
CHS – Safety 5:51
CHS – Cunningham 40-yard run. PAT kick Kokoneshi 4:49
Fourth quarter
CHS – Randall 9-yard run. PAT kick Kokoneshi. 10:26