POOLER — Pierce County’s 1-2 punch of Drake Dowling and Jae’Veon Williams combined for 289 yards and four touchdowns leading the Class 2A second-ranked Bears to a 39-14 victory Thursday over New Hampstead at the Pooler Recreation Complex.
The rare Thursday night kick was used because of the Phoenix and Savannah Christian sharing the facility. The Raiders hosted Fellowship Christian Friday night in a clash of Class A-3A private school powers.
Bears’ head coach Ryan Herring did not feel the short practice week had much bearing on the game.
“Everything was different for both teams,” he said. “It didn’t affect the mistakes we made ... there’s no excuses there. I’m extremely happy to come up here and win. If you told me before the game we were going to win 39-14 I would have taken that in a heartbeat.”
PCHS (4-0) pulled away from a 7-all tie midway through the opening stanza, scoring 32 of the final 39 points against the Phoenix (1-4), who have dropped four consecutive games.
“We did not play well,” said head coach Ryan Herring to his team afterwards. “We played good enough to win ... we’ve got a lot of work to fix things.”
The Bears scored on five of their eight offensive possessions with four touchdowns and a 36--yard field goal by Garrett Stevenson. PCHS returned an interception and forced a safety on the defensive side of the ball.
“It was beautiful,” said Herring of the win. “We never got stopped. Any drive we got stopped was because of penalties — self-inflicted penalties.
“I’ve got to look at the tape to see if those holding calls were actually holding. They may have all been, but we literally stopped ourselves with penalties ... they never stopped us. If we were holding we’ve got to get that fixed.
“Defensively, we had some defensive backs make some great breaks on some thrown balls. Interior- wise, we’ve got a long way to go. We’re still a work in progress and we’ve got a long way to go.”
Williams finished the night with career-highs in carries (22) and yards (169). He scored three touchdowns on runs of 48, one and 13 yards. Dowling totaled 120 yards on 15 carries with one score. It was his third straight game surpassing the century mark.
The duo became the third set of teammates, 25th overall, to reach 100 yards twice, joining D.J. Bell and Jimarion Guyton (eight times - 2022-23) and Tyler Simpson-Travis Grant (twice - 2002).
