But not when West Rowan’s football team is aspiring to bigger and better things than ever before, and not in a lackluster game littered with so many mistakes against a weak team. So after the Falcons finished off Harding by a 36-0 final in their 3A South Piedmont Conference opener, there was more head-scratching and embarrassment than cheering and excitement.

“We’re very disappointed, but I think that tells how far we’ve come as a football team,”West head coach Scott Young said. “Last year we’d have been happy to beat somebody 36-0.”

West still improved to 4-0 for the season and dropped Harding to 0-4, but theFalcons lost nearly as many yards on penalties (104) as the Rams gained (107). The Falcons had two touchdowns called back and an 82-yard Scooter Dalton sprint to the 2-yard line negated by a holding call. Keeping that run would have put the senior tailback at better than 200 for the game.

“It was in the back of my mind,”saidDalton, who finished with 119 yards on 12 carries. “I got about 100 called back in my mind.”

Dalton scored from 38 and 12 yards out to finish off a 22-point second quarter after theFalcons struggled through the first 12 minutes. Harding advanced into Falcon territory twice in the early going but didn’t score, while West went three plays and out in its only first-quarter possession.

On West’s first chance of the second quarter, Dalton raced from the 16-yard line all the way inside the 5 before finally being tackled, but the play came back because of a holding penalty, one of six flags that flew at West in the first half. The long-yardage situation forced the Falcons to punt, then West got some good luck.

Harding’s punt receiver misjudged Dalton’s kick around midfield and approached it, let it hit him and then backed away as a pack of Falcons gleefully pounced on the gift. Quarterback Jared Barnette dropped back on the next play and found Scooter Sherrill wide open for a 33-yard strike, and the ensuing two-point conversion made it 8-0 at the 9:09 mark of the second quarter.

A Harding fumble on its next possession set up Dalton’s 38-yard score, and West marched down field in five plays a few minutes later to secure a 22-0 lead when Dalton went untouched into the end zone.

“We played pretty good in the first quarter, we had good opportunities to score, had good field position,”Rams head coach Alvin Wideman said. “We didn’t capitalize, we turn it over and they score boom, boom, boom!

“We just didn’t keep playing like we did in the first quarter. If you look at our intensity after the first quarter we just went flat.”

Even though the scoreboard suggested otherwise, West didn’t really play differently in the second quarter either, something Young let his team know.

“He pretty much handed it to us,” Dalton said of Young’s halftime talk. “I’m pretty sure it’ll come Monday, too, he said to be ready for it.”

West looked like a new team for a while in the second half. The Falcons marched 89 yards for an apparent score on a Sherrill reverse that was called back on a clipping foul. Three plays later Harding snared an interception in the end zone, but fumbled two plays later. Sophomore Luke Dreschler picked up the loose ball and advanced it to the 13-yard line, and Dalton finished things off from there for a 30-0 advantage.

West’s final touchdown was a gift that left Wideman and his staff in despair.

On fourth-and-15 from the Harding 35, Barnette dropped back to pass on the final play of the third quarter. He hit Justin Davis about 5 yards short of the first down and Ram defensive back Rashad Graham was there for the tackle. Graham climbed on Davis’ back for the tackle and slid off, then watched Davis reverse direction toward the middle and race untouched for West’s fifth TD.

“Tackling, blocking, you name it. You’d think we never work on it,” Wideman said. “We can’t go out there and play for them.”

No more than Young can control what his team reads about itself.

“We had an open week but we had real good practices,”Young said. “This week we come here to play Harding and we start getting all that publicity. I think they think they’re world-beaters now, they can win without playing disciplined football, and we’re not that good yet.

“Championship contending teams don’t commit those penalties, and that’s my fault as a coach,”Young added. “I’ve got to get more strict.”

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