BELLEFONTE — It’s not a reference to the coming Halloween season to say that Central’s Alex Hoenstine had a monster game in Bellefonte on Oct. 14.
No, this was more about how Hoenstine singlehandedly accounted for 307 total yards of offense and five touchdowns in the Dragons’ 40-0 victory over the Red Raiders at Rogers Stadium.
Hoenstine’s hand was in everything from start to finish. He fired up his sluggish teammates early in the second quarter, ran and passed them to a 21-point lead by halftime, and then kept digging as Central rumbled to its seventh victory of the season against only one loss.
Hoenstine’s numbers were impressive — even for him. The 6-foot-2, 186-pound senior ran the ball 24 times for 218 yards and three touchdowns as a running back, completed four passes for 61 yards and a touchdown at quarterback, and caught two passes for 28 yards and another score when he split out as a receiver.
It was all Hoenstine until running back Trystan Detwiler capped the scoring for Central with a 60-yard run midway through the fourth quarter.
“He (Hoenstine) is a great player,” Central coach David Baker said. “We have other good players too, but he’s a great player no doubt.”
Both teams began with sluggish starts in the game, but Hoenstine got the Dragons moving on their second possession.
After a 16-play, 74-yard drive, Hoenstine took it in from the six for a 7-0 Central lead with just over a minute to play in the first quarter. Hoenstine was directly involved, running or passing, in 12 of those 16 plays.
Five minutes later, he capped another long Dragon drive with a 7-yard pass to Austin Garner for a two-score Central lead. The play came on a fourth-and-goal from the 7-yard line, and Hoenstine’s pass perfectly led Garner into the right corner of the end zone.
Ahead now 14-0, the Dragons forced Bellefonte into another three-and-out and another punt — the Raiders managed just seven yards and no first downs in the first half — and then set off on their third consecutive drive of over 60 yards.
Hoenstine’s 24-yard run touchdown run finished that one off and put Central in control at 21-0.
“Once we started blocking them without holding, we ran straight at them and that was the key I think,” Baker said. “And without a doubt our defense played really good.
“I don’t know what to say about that, but they just could not block us and they had trouble passing when we put some pressure on. It was a good game by our defense without a doubt.”
The second half was more of the same for the Dragons. They scored the first two times they had the ball after halftime, on runs of 75 and 4 yards by Hoenstine, and took a commanding 34-0 lead.
To its credit, Bellefonte also began to move the ball after the break. Quarterback Chase Gardner threw for 74 yards, all in the second half, and C.J. Funk, Nick Catalano, Logan Simpson and Colton Burd combined for 100 yards on the ground.
But it was all too late, and with just under five minutes to play, Detwiler’s run put the game under the mercy rule.
“They (Central) have a lot of athletes and they put those athletes on the field,” Bellefonte head coach Shannon Manning said. “(Hoenstine) is the icing on the cake, but there is a lot of cake underneath that icing. That’s not a one-man band, I’ll tell you that.
“It was disappointing that it was 40-0, but we will be back next week and we will look very different. Those (the Bellefonte players) are tough kids and they all went out on that field and they all competed. I don’t question our effort or our attempt to compete.”
Bellefonte finished the game with 185 yards of offense, almost all of which came in the second half. Gardner and Tyler Kreger combined for 104 of those yards through the air, but the Raiders only netted 81 yards on the ground in 24 tries.
The closest the Raiders came to scoring was on their final possession of the game when time ran out at the Central 3-yard line.
Central, now 7-1 and still chasing Clearfield in the Mountain League standings, will travel to Huntingdon next week to take on the Bearcats and will then finish its regular season Friday, Oct. 28, at Eastern York.
Bellefonte is 4-4 and will next be at home against Chestnut Ridge before the big season finale against BEA on Friday, Oct. 28, at Rogers Stadium.
