By Scott Dudinskie
For The Daily Item
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TURBOTVILLE — It was no mystery who was responsible for Warrior Run’s huge first-half deficit Friday.
The Butler did it. Over and over and over.
Hughesville’s Cody Butler scored five touchdowns — three in the first half — to lead the Spartans to a 41-15 win over the Defenders in the teams’ season opener.
The senior tailback rushed for 131 yards (at better than 10 yards a carry) and four scores, and also caught a pair of passes for 54 yards and a TD as the defending HAC-III champs rolled up nearly 400 yards of offense.
“I think Butler’s going to make a lot of teams look like that,” said Warrior Run coach Chris Eiswerth. “He’s going to be a heck of a college player.”
Eiswerth’s team lost for the 20th consecutive time following a win in his 2008 debut.
The Defenders, who were realigned to HAC-III following a winless ’09 campaign, trailed by 28 points at halftime but outscored the Spartans with two Austin Oberdorf TDs in the second half.
Butler scored on a 53-yard sweep just 90 seconds into the game. It was a sign of things to come for the Spartans, who had great success running to the edges of Warrior Run’s defense.
Fullback Ethan Showers finished with 132 yards on 17 carries.
Hughesville, a district semifinalist last year, nearly went up two scores midway through the first quarter when D.J. Foresman found Wade Hines alone beyond the secondary. The ball was slightly underthrown, however, and the Defenders’ Johnathan Badman was able to strip Hines short of the end zone. Warrior Run’s Nick Lose recovered the fumble.
But in the second quarter, a pair of Warrior Run fumbles led to Hughesville touchdowns, and another Spartans’ TD resulted from the fourth straight drive that began in Defenders territory.
Butler scored on runs of 32 and 2 yards in the quarter, and he also had a 30-yarder negated by penalty on a drive that ended with a Hughesville punt.
“I didn’t think the 28-0 (defiict) really showed where we were,” said Eiswerth. “We came out in the second half and put things together in a beautiful drive.”
