By ALEC ETHEREDGE | Staff Writer

THORSBY – The Thorsby Rebels hosted their first home game of the season on Friday night after traveling to Prattville Christian last week in a game they lost 29-21.

This week they played host to the Pickens County Tornados, but their fortune wasn’t much better. On their first drive of the game the Rebels went three and out and were forced to punt. That punt was returned for a touchdown by the Tornados to put them up 6-0 with less than three minutes having wound off the clock.

Thorsby got the ball back and went on a three-minute drive that included a 33-yard run from Sophomore Christin Brown. They followed that up by a few more nice plays to get them down inside the 10-yard line. Thorsby ended up having third and fourth down from the five-yard line, but couldn’t advance the ball in for a touchdown and this is when the momentum really shifted.

Pickens County would go on a six-minute drive and eventually punch the ball in from five yards out to go up 12-0 and they wouldn’t look back.

The Tornados would end up with another 70 plus yard punt return, a pick six, a 62 yard touchdown pass and several other big plays to win this one 52-0.

Although they were down the entire game there were moments late in the third quarter where the defense stepped up and made some big plays and hits and the players and fans got excited.

“Our guys did a god job of keeping their heads up tonight,” said Rebels head coach Billy Jackson. “We don’t want them to quit, we want them to sell out and compete every play. I’m proud that they showed class even when we were getting beat like that.”

Thorsby went three and out on four of its six drives in the first half, which just didn’t give them much of an opportunity to rest the defense or get any kind of momentum throughout the game.

“We have young guys that did a lot of good things today,” Jackson said. “We have to find the things they did good and just get better at that and some of the little things like jumping offside and missing blocks has got to stop.”

Thorsby goes to Frances Marion next week for their first area game of the season.

“We start area play next week, so we don’t have time to sit there and lick our wounds,” Jackson said. “This week was the first obstacle in our way and showed us what we need to do to make playoffs, so we need to come in ready to work on Monday.”