Jim Mashek

WILDCATS BACK LAYNE ALFORD SCORES 4 TOUCHDOWNS IN ROUT OF WINLESS BEARS

FRANKLIN — Brady Delk is Franklin-Simpson High School’s junior quarterback, and he’ll take plenty of snaps in the secondary, too.

Ayden Jones, the sturdy Franklin-Simpson senior running back, excels at running between the tackles. Lean sophomore Xavier Hampton, a speedster in the Wildcats’ backfield, is adept at getting outside and into the open field.

Franklin-Simpson’s Blake McPherson does a little bit of everything, and he’s been the tradition-rich Wildcats’ leading rusher through their first five games, tallying 397 yards and three touchdowns.

Then there’s Layne Alford.

The 5-foot-11, 195-pound senior fullback, Franklin-Simpson’s meal ticket in a district game on Friday night against Butler County, made it happen as the Wildcats handled the Bears, 35-0, in a game played in torrential rain and sometimes windy conditions created by the outer bands of Tropical Storm Helene.

Alford rushed for four touchdowns, including the fourth-quarter score that prompted a running clock for the remainder of the game, as the Wildcats improved to 4-2 overall and 1-1 in KHSAA Class 3A, 2nd District play. Butler County quarterback Garrett Phelps did all he could to keep the Bears in the game, but the Franklin-Simpson defense was equal to the task.

Butler County remains winless in six games.

“We shot ourselves in the foot, a little bit, in the first half,” Franklin-Simpson coach Max Chaney said. “We got what we wanted, in a game played in conditions like this. We got a win, and we didn’t have any major injuries. Now we get to work on the next one.

“We got (junior lineman) Jackson Crafton back, from an injury, and that was definitely good to see.”

The Wildcats resume district play with another home game against Glasgow High School (3-3, 1-1) on Friday night, and homecoming festivities originally scheduled for Friday night were pushed back one week to the home game with the Scotties.

Franklin-Simpson quarterback Brady Delk, a standout for the Wildcats’ baseball team, too, said he’d never played before in monsoon-like conditions. Officials tried to keep rotating dry footballs onto the field, but they could do only so much. They also threw more penalty flags than you’d see in an Oakland Raiders game in their heyday of the ’70s.

That often disrupted the game’s flow, but it was that kind of night. Butler County declined to move the game up to Thursday night, which was the case for the vast majority of the games involving teams in South Central Kentucky.

“That’s the worst weather I’ve ever played in. Definitely,” Delk said in the victorious Franklin-Simpson locker room. “You’ve just got to play with a lot of energy, keep going, and it’s really kind of fun.”

Indeed, some of the Wildcats’ players seemed tempted to go outside and play in the mud between the stadium and the Joker Phillips Field House on the Franklin-Simpson campus.

Senior F-S running back Layne Alford said the Wildcats played better in the second half, perhaps needing some time to adjust to the conditions.

“I think we had some mental mistakes in the first half,” Alford said. “But we bonded, as a team, getting a lead and playing better in the second half.”