Wildcats win on Senior Night

Published | Oct 14, 2023

Valdese- The 56-12 win for the Draughn football team over Rosman didn’t take long to get established.

The night most importantly belonged to the 14 Wildcat seniors playing their last regular season home game.

Senior Nigel Dula established his mark with a four-touchdown performance and, unofficially, has 89 career touchdown runs -six away from the Burke County record set by Freedom’s BJ Emmons.

Senior quarterback Eli Tillery added three touchdown passes to classmates Justice Cunningham, Ethan Miller, and Shaydon Pino. He also had 224 passing yards on nine completions divided among seven different receivers.

Cunningham also added a touchdown run while senior Hampton Blackwell also got a couple of rushes out of the backfield and Connor Pinkerton a couple of receptions from Tillery.

Defensively, Blackwell, Colton Lukomski, Kelton Mitchell, Tristan Hines, and Will Seagle were seniors credited with stops.

And finally, senior Rudy Mendoza made all eight of his point-after kicks to account for 48 made this season.

Other seniors to be recognized in a pregame ceremony included Skylar Hudson and Jesus Becerra.

For the Wildcat underclassmen, Sterling Radabaugh made two catches for 43 yards while Marshall Brinkley (fumble recovery), Paul Miller, Alex Wright, and Talon Bradshaw made defensive stops.

Rosman broke the shutout with a second-quarter touchdown run by Jayden Reynaldo and the Tigers added another score in the final seconds of the game.

Draughn now gets to enjoy the bye week ahead of the regular season finale on October 27th at Mountain Heritage in a possible showdown for the Western Highlands 1A/2A Conference championship.

“We are 1-0 on the week, it’s a big win to prepare us to go on the road to Mountain Heritage,” said Draughn coach Chris Powell.

“Proud of the way our kids played, the defense came out early and got some big turnovers and stops for us, the offense was clicking early. Hats off to Rosman, they are much improved and played hard all night.”