Comfort comes up short

Jay Rieken will have to wait another week to record his first win as the Bobcats head coach.

Comfort opened its season on the road at Johnson City and was roughed up by the Eagles Friday night, 58-20.

The Cats start the year at 0-1 and hope to get Rieken his first win Friday when they travel to Ingram. Rieken was an assistant with the program for 16 years before he was named head coach last spring.

Friday’s game held a baseball-like score of 9-8 at the end of the first quarter.

Johnson City scored on a short run and then its defense came up with a safety for the 9-0 lead.

Comfort scored late in the first on a Topper Sterling 1-yard run and the Cats went for two and converted to make it 9-8.

Both teams scored touchdowns early in the second quarters. Mason West found the end zone on a 6-yard run for the Cats but they were still trailing 16-14 and wouldn’t get closer than that as the Eagles started to pull away from there.

Johnson City tallied three more touchdowns before halftime and rolled into the locker room at the break leading 37-20 to take control of the contest.

Comfort quarterback Micah Nye had the Bobcats’ final TD run of the game on a 31-yard scamper in the second quarter.

The Bobcats weren’t able to score in the second half, while the Eagles punched it in three more times. Johnson City hit a 13-yard scoring strike in the third, followed by a short TD run late in the quarter to open a 51-20 lead with 2:43 left in the stanza.

Neither team was able to do much in the fourth quarter. But Johnson City was able to score once more late in the game on a 12-yard run with 1:57 remaining on the clock for the final of 58-20.