New Look Poinciana Eagles Beat Harmony Longhorns For First Time in 20 Years

By: J. Daniel Pearson

In its 34 years of existence, Poinciana had not seen a lot of success on the gridiron. And — if records are accurate — the Eagles have only had two non-losing seasons during that time period.

First-year Poinciana head coach Taron Mallard said he wants to change the perception that the Eagles can’t win at football and he took a major step in that direction Friday night with a 26-5 win over Harmony.

Although the Longhorns have had their own struggles recently, the win was significant for than a couple of reasons. It was the just the second time in school history, and first since 2004 (the year Harmony opened) that the Eagles have beaten the Longhorns.

It was also significant in that it not only gave them a road win against a team they had lost eight straight to. But most notably, it didn’t generate a huge celebration afterwards usually befitting a huge win.

“Part of changing the culture is not acting surprised with a win. I was really proud of how we took care of business tonight,” first-year Poinciana coach Taron Mallard said. “We knew Harmony was a bigger, deeper and perhaps a more physical team, so we challenged our kids to match them – especially up front. One of our big challenges we face is to convince our guys we can compete with the teams on our schedule and they responded to that challenge.”

It did not start out great for the Eagles, as they fell behind 5-0 after one quarter thanks to an errant snap on a punt that resulted in a safety and a 43-yard field goal by sophomore kicker Brayden Buehler.

But the final three quarters would belong solely to the Eagles.

Quarterback Cameron Brown started finding receivers with touchdown passes of 27 yards to Javonte Simpson-Lee and 53 yards to Ernest Nunn gave Poinciana a 14-5 lead.

They would preserve that lead thanks to a goal line stop right before the end of the first half. With Harmony knocking on the door with a second-and-goal from the one with seven seconds remaining, the Eagles defense stuffed quarterback Landon Hayes on a sneak and as officials were determining the spot, Harmony did not call a timeout and the clock expired.

It was one of many missed scoring opportunities that the Longhorns did not take advantage of.

Of their 13 possessions in the game, Harmony’s average starting position was the 50 – including four starts inside the Poinciana 30. But time-and=time again, the Eagles turned the Longhorns away. For the game, Poinciana came up with four interceptions, two quarterback sacks, six other tackles-for-loss and three fourth down stops.

Leading by nine thanks to a couple of big pass plays, Poinciana finally put an impressive drive together midway through the third quarter as Brown directed a 13-play, 80-yard scoring drive capped by a Wil Nezius 5-yard touchdown run to make it 20-5.

“That has been our game this year,” Mallard noted. “We are multi-dimensional and sometimes the run or pass isn’t working but we are going to stay true to what we believe in with the understanding that we are going to break a big play.”

Still, Harmony had a chance to get back into the game after Nezius score when Chase Adams returned the ensuing kickoff 65 yards to the Poinciana 30. A first down put the Longhorns in the red zone, but four consecutive plays netted just nine yards and Harmony would turn the ball over on downs.

The clincher came four series later when Nunn intercepted Hayes and returned it 37 yards for a touchdown and the 26-5 final.

“I hate sounding like broken record but as with the Kickoff Classic and our opener we had our chances again but we failed to execute when we needed to. We had field position, we made some plays and we moved the ball but we just didn’t finish drives.” Harmony coach Nick Lippert said. “Give them credit, that’s not the same Poinciana team people are used to seeing. They have some athletes and Brown is an absolute beast. Still, they didn’t do anything that surprised us.”

Poinciana’s win sets up next week’s road game with St. Cloud (2-0) in a battle of two of the county’s three undefeated teams left. “I don’t know a lot about them or their players, so we’ll watch the film tomorrow. What I do know is Coach Short is doing a great job there and they have won a lot of games in the last couple of years. We’re going to view that game like this one, and opportunity to move our program forward.”

Harmony will look for it win when they travel to Sebastian River (1-1).