WINTERSVILLE — For East Liverpool, Friday night ended with the Potters off to their best start in 18 years. For Indian Creek, it’s back to the drawing board.

Coach Josh Ludwig’s Potters used another stellar performance from senior quarterback Howard Williams to defeat the Redskins 34-13 at Kettlewell Memorial Stadium and improve to 2-0.

“I feel like the kids are getting over the hump,” Ludwig said. “It felt good to win against a very good football that is well-coached.”

The Redskins, on the other hand, were never able to hang on to momentum in what was their second-straight home loss to start the season.

“East Liverpool is a good football team,” Indian Creek coach Andrew Connor said. “They matched our start and were able to pick it up. Momentum is a tough thing and they grabbed momentum from us when we had it.

“We just couldn’t get things turned around. The kids played hard. We’ll have to go back and look at the film and see what what we did right and what we did wrong we have to fix.”

The win is the first for the Potters against Indian Creek in eight years.

Despite the past successes against East Liverpool, Connor was not surprised by how effective the Potters were.

“They’ve got a good football team and they made some big plays,” Connor said. “Coach Ludwig does a good job. I have to go back and examine what I did. He did a good job, I didn’t do a good job and it’s pretty obvious how it worked out.”

Williams did damage with both his legs and his feet, rushing for 133 yards and a pair of scores while tossing for another 190 yards and an additional two touchdowns.

“I say it every week, he’s just a very good football player,” Ludwig said. “He’s a 4.0 student and a leader on the field. It’s awesome to have that much trust in somebody and allow him to run the offense, allow him to check and auto. It makes it hard on defenses when a guy is so smart at that position because he can take over a game.”

His first two touchdowns came on consecutive possessions on runs of 16 and 19 yards, which put East Liverpool up 14-7 late in the second quarter.

The Redskins had opened the scoring with a Jonathan Giusto 1-yard plunge into the end zone to cap a long drive early in the second quarter after a scoreless opening 12 minutes.

“We got off to a very slow start,” Ludwig said. “This is a very gritty team. In the past, we may have let the slow start get to us, but this team is confident and continued to grind and did what it took to win.”

With a little under a minute to work with before halftime, the Redskins elected to push for points after a good kick return, but on the first play of the drive a scrambling David Ferroni (4 of 12, 23 yards) fired a short pass that was intercepted by the Potters secondary.

Then, Howard fired a deep ball to Braidyn Wright to make it a 21-7 halftime lead for the visitors.

Indian Creek got a break early in the third when Williams mishandled a snap and the Redskins recovered the ball at the Potters 24, which led to a Jeremy Brown (14 carries, 100 yards) 14-yard scoring run.

“He ran hard and played hard,” Connor said. “He did the things we ask our kids to do.

“We has a chance there to get back in it in the third quarter. Once we lost the momentum, we just never got it back.”

That was it for the Redskins scoring, however, as East Liverpool scored on another long Williams pass on the ensuing drive to recapture the momentum.

“That was huge because that was a momentum shift,” Ludwig said. “We could have really let that get to us but we didn’t. We kept fighting. That’s where the grit came in.”

Devin Tootham added a late scoring run of 14 yards to give East Liverpool the 34-13 final margin of victory.

“No one is going to feel sorry for us,” Connor said. “We put ourselves in this predicament and it’s up to me to get us out of this predicament.”

E. LIVERPOOL: 0-21-7-6–34

I. CREEK: 0- 7 -6-0–13

SCORING

IC–Giusto 1 run (Herald kick)

EL–H. Williams 16 run (McNicol kick)

EL–H. Williams 19 run (McNicol kick)

EL–Wright 33 pass from H. Williams (McNicol kick)

IC–Brown 14 run (kick failed)

EL–Stull 33 pass from H. Williams (McNicol kick)

EL–Toothman 14 run (kick blocked)

——

STATISTICS

RUSHING: East Liverpool 38-251-3TD (H. Williams 16-133-2TD; Toothman 15-42-TD; E. Williams 5-37; Mapp 1-14; Bailey 1-21); Indian Creek 37-140-2TD (Brown 14-100-TD; Irizarry 6-9; Ferroni 7-6; Giusto 8-22-TD; Powell 1-14; Coleman 1-(-1).

PASSING: East Liverpool 11-20-190-2TD (all by H. Williams); Indian Creek 4-12-23-INT (all by Ferroni).

RECEIVING: East Liverpool 11-190-2TD (E. Williams 6-76; Toothman 2-25; Wright 1-33-TD; Stull 1-33-TD); Indian Creek 4-23 (Coleman 3-17; Brown 1-6).

FIRST DOWNS: East Liverpool 17; Indian Creek 11.

FUMBLES-LOST: East Liverpool 1-1; Indian Creek 0-0.

PENALTIES-YARDS: 16-150; Indian Creek 5-55.

PUNTS: East Liverpool 2-43.5; Indian Creek 4-28.5.