Hawthorne Dominates Williston for 37-0 Win

HAWTHORNE – The Hawthorne Hornets forced multiple turnovers and turned them into points Friday night when they routed the Williston Mighty Red Devils, 37-0, in the 1A-District 4 football game. 

Williston entered 1-0 in district play, but it struggled to find any rhythm from the first whistle to fall to 1-4 overall.

Hawthorne (6-0, 1-0 district) capitalized on a string of Williston turnovers in the first half to jump to a 30-0 lead at the break en route ot its 45th consecutive home win.

An interception from Hawthorne’s Jayvyn Comer started the defense’s turnover-heavy first half. Hawthorne was unable to turn the turnover into points, but their defense continued to force Williston into mistakes. 

Hawthorne broke through in the second quarter. The first of Dakarai Wiggins’ two rushing touchdowns put the Hornets on the board and Wiggins scored the ensuing two-point conversion, opening the game at 8-0.

From there, Williston’s turnovers began to turn into points for the Hornets.

Back-to-back fumbles from the Red Devils set up Hornet touchdown runs from Wiggins and Derryek Gillins. After only converting on one of the two-point conversions, Hawthorne’s lead grew to 22-0 with 1:57 left in the half.

The Hornets weren’t finished. 

Hawthorne struck again just 50 seconds later when quarterback Jusiah Roundtree, nicknamed “Baby Roundtree” by his team, connected with Maverick Jones for a touchdown with 1:07 remaining in the half. Wiggins added another two-point conversion to give Hawthorne a dominant 30-0 lead at halftime. 

In the second half, penalties riddled the Hornets, consistently stopping drives in their tracks. A pair of interceptions from Hawthorne quarterback Treston Jones in the third quarter also kept the Hornets from increasing their lead.

However, Williston failed to turn Hawthorne’s turnovers into points, punting on both ensuing drives. 

Hawthorne coach Cornelius Ingram said he and his staff will rewatch the tape to see what needs to be cleaned up.

“There’s times when I chew kids out and I have to go back and apologize, because it wasn’t a hold. … We just try to be balanced on both sides, but we’ll clean it up,”  Ingram said.

The scoring resumed with 3:17 remaining in the third quarter, when Gillins scored his second rushing touchdown. Hawthorne sent the extra point through the uprights to make it 37-0. 

Hawthorne’s win marked its second full game without starting quarterback Richard Roundtree Jr. after his season-ending leg injury. But even without Roundtree Jr., the Hornets have scored 87 points in his absence. 

“I have one of the best defenses in the entire state,” Ingram said. “They give us confidence, there’s times where we can go for it on fourth down and not even be concerned, because we know our defense can go out and get stops.”

The Hornets travel to Crawfordville to face the Wakulla War Eagles (5-1) next Friday at 7 p.m.

“We got a big one next week with Wakulla,” Ingram said. “So we gotta get back to the drawing board and make our improvements, but we’ll get better.”

Category: Football, Hawthorne High School, High School Sports