By ALEC ETHEREDGE | Sports Editor

ALABASTER – Last season, the Kingwood Christian Lions won just one game the entire year, but during week one of the 2018 football season, the Lions showed this year would be a different story with a 34-0 shutout of Pickens Academy.

Move forward one week, and Kingwood has already surpassed its win total from 2017 after that momentous win a week ago carried over into a big rivalry matchup with Alabaster foe Evangel Christian in a rivalry matchup.

While the Lightning were also coming off a strong opening-week performance, a 48-0 win, Kingwood showed this year was going to be no joke thanks to a 28-6 win against Evangel to move to 2-0 on the young season.

It was a continuation of a strong effort for the Lions, specifically on the defensive side of the ball, having now given up just six combined points in two games against two teams that had strong offenses a season ago.

Kingwood got to work early on offense after forcing Evangel into an early punt.

After a strong drive took the Lions inside the Lightning 5-yard line, Peyton Long put the first points on the board with a touchdown run to make the score 6-0 with around seven minutes to play in the first quarter.

With that touchdown, it not only gave Kingwood’s offense confidence moving forward, but gave the defense a shot of momentum as well thanks to playing with the lead.

It didn’t take long for the defense to show the confidence it was playing with when Connor Shaddix picked up an interception, which quickly led to a field goal for the Lions to extend the lead to 9-0 at the end of the first quarter.

It looked as if that was going to be the halftime score, but Kingwood had some more noise to make when Tyler West caught a 30-yard touchdown to extend the Lions’ lead even further to 15-0 heading into the halftime break.

Coming out in the second half, Kingwood had all of the momentum and tried to really put the pressure on after converting an onside kick to start the half.

Evangel’s defense, however, stepped up to force a turnover on downs, which seemed to shift the momentum briefly in favor of the Lightning.

They were able to put together a nice drive that featured several first downs before a roll out touchdown pass from Tyler Henderson cut the deficit to 15-6.

Kingwood, however, took that momentum shift and squashed it. The Lions quickly answered back with a 66-yard bomb to Antonio Ruiz for a touchdown that extended the Lions’ lead back to 15 at 21-6.

Tyler West put the final nail in the coffin early in the fourth quarter with a rushing touchdown that put Kingwood on top 28-6, which became the final score.

With the win, the Lions moved to 2-0 for the first time since 2013, while Evangel fell to 1-1.