Hornets run past Pelham

The Chelsea High School football team ran past Pelham on Friday night at Pelham High School, pounding the ball on the ground en route to a 55-35 road victory. With the win, the Hornets are now 4-1 overall and 2-1 within Class 6A, Region 3.

Running back Zalon Reynolds and quarterback Matthew Marquet dominated throughout the game, combining for three scores as part of a 21-point first quarter for Chelsea. The senior Marquet started the scoring, scampering into the end zone after keeping the ball on an inside option to tie the game at 7-7.

Reynolds posted his first points through the air, tossing a trick play touchdown to receiver Hunter Blackburn that the Hornets out front, 14-7, before Marquet’s second rushing touchdown extended the lead even further.

“Matt and Zalon are special,” Chelsea coach Chris Elmore said following the game. “We’re going to ride them as long as we can ride them and hopefully keep them as healthy as we can.”

With Chelsea leading but Pelham pushing back each time, Reynolds began to take over the game. Running through, over, and around Pelham’s defense, the senior running back posted a pair of rushing touchdowns in the second before streaking sideline-to-sideline and powering past the plane to give the Hornets a definitive 48-21 advantage in the third quarter.

After being challenged by Elmore earlier this week, Reynolds and the Hornets responded.

“Coach (Elmore) was basically telling us that we’re a special team,” Reynolds said after his dominant performance. “We stepped it up in the beginning of the second half. We were able to pull away early in the third quarter and get our (substitutes) in. Second half we stepped it up a notch.”

Despite a gap in talent on the field, the Hornets continued to struggle against big plays. This included miscues on special teams early, poor tackling, and miscommunication that allowed a pair of short passes to turn into points for the Panthers.

“Too many big plays and our defense knows that,” Elmore said. “We played really hard on defense but just gave up a couple of big plays. You can’t do that against good teams and we’re still trying to learn how to limit those as much as we can.”

The Hornets are now averaging 42 points per game, displaying both tempo and talent offensively despite having room for improvement; at least according to their coach.

“I thought for the most part we played pretty well tonight, obviously there’s a few things defensively that weren’t right for us. I don’t know if we’re doing a great job of blocking but Matt and Zalon were doing a great job running. It made us look better than we probably executed.”

Up next for Chelsea is a home game against Gardendale next week before a huge region game at Opelika October 7.