CAPE WINS TIGER FIGHT; CAPE CENTRAL RIPS OAKVILLE

Oakville coach Todd Winter indicated early in the week he'd probably hold out eight starters against the Cape Central Tigers in Thursday's football game.

As it turned out Winter was missing only six regulars Thursday, but the two extra starters hardly mattered. Cape Central scored the first 40 points of the game, on the way to a 47-20 non-conference victory.

Central's Tigers improved to 5-1, while the Oakville Tigers dropped their third game in a row to fall to 2-4.

Tatum Kitchen scored three times and Justin Blackmon ran for 153 yards and another TD to lead the Tigers. Reserves Demarco Williams, Emmanuel Harris and Travis Cox added the final three scores in the second half.

"We got up enough where we were able to get some kids quality game experience," said Central coach Jerry Dement. "We ran the ball extremely well and I thought the kids executed very well on the line of scrimmage."

It also didn't hurt matters that the Oakville players had a hard time attaching the football to their hands. Oakville lost three fumbles and dropped several passes as the visiting Tiger quarterbacks completed a combined 10-of-30 passes.

Oakville's ball-handling problems were a factor from the start of the game, as Central recovered a fumbled kickoff return at the Oakville 21-yard line just seconds into the game.

A 20-yard pass from Frank McGinty to Gabe Wunderlich set up Kitchen's first touchdown on the next play. Jeff Michel's kick put Central ahead 7-0.

It was the kind of start Dement was hoping to see from his team.

"They (Oakville) had a lot of emotion going in and we had a lot of enthusiasm," said Dement. "If you have too much emotion and something goes against you, it can really drop you. We thought if we could get up on them early, we could make them drop their heads."

Oakville's heads wouldn't surface again until the fourth quarter when the Tigers scored 20 points against Central's reserves. By then, Central already had 40 points on the board.

McGinty completed Central's scoring with a 10-yard scoring pass to Cox in the corner of the end zone. Michel's kick made the score 47-13 with 3:18 left in the game. McGinty completed 4-of-10 passes for 71 yards.

But the story for the Tigers was their running game. Central's four main running backs combined for 238 yards and six TDs. Behind Blackmon's team-leading total, Kitchen added 34 yards, Williams 28 and Harris 23.

"We have four backs that run the ball very nice," said Dement. "Justin gets most of (the carries), but Tatum, Demarco and Emmanuel are all good running backs. I wouldn't trade them for anybody. They block for each other and they run hard."

Harris also added a nifty 34-yard reception on a fourth-and-10 screen pass that set up his three-yard scoring run in the third quarter. Williams had scored earlier in the quarter on a 23-yard scamper.