A 4-game winning streak and celebrating "Homecoming" had White Knoll in high spirits Friday night in the Wolf's Den.
Sophomore quarterback Cal Herndon and a Lexington team determined to snap a 2-game skid were anxious to play spoiler. 
Capitalizing off four turnovers and Herndon contributing to four scores, Lexington defeated the Timberwolves 42-21 in the Region 5-5A opener for both teams. 
Herndon rushed for 103 yards and two touchdowns and was 8-14 passing for 132 yards and two scores to Elliott Herndon. The Wildcats also amassed over 267 rushing yards and got two touchdowns from reserve running backs Ahmad Bynem-Scott and Taylor Mathias. 
"It was weird," Lexington head coach Perry Woolbright said. We've got a "Next Man Up" motto. Ahmad got banged up. Taylor Mathias, who hadn't running back all year for us and just practice some, came in and made some big runs. So, that's kind of the way we do. We tell everybody's got to be ready and the way we practice each week is making sure everybody's got a role and everybody knows what they've got to do and that's what it showed tonight."
Lexington jumped out to a 21-0 lead at halftime. Bynem-Scott put the Wildcats on the board with a 1-yard run with 3:59 left in the first quarter. 
In the second quarter, a 'flea flicker" set up a 24-yard touchdown pass from Cal to Elliott Herndon to extend the lead to 14-0. Nearly two minutes later, Cal broke free for a 53-yard touchdown run to stun the "Homecoming" crowd.
"We were coming off a bad loss to Spring Valley," Cal Herndon said. "We just had to show up with confidence and that's what we did tonight."
"We've been playing together since kindergarten and it was great to finally get it done on the real field," Elliott Herndon said. 
With 53 seconds left before halftime, White Knoll quarterback Aveon Smith put his team on the board with a 10-yard touchdown pass to Aiden Myers. The Timberwolves cut the deficit to 21-14 with 4:17 left in the thrid quarter on a touchdown pass from Smith to Jamias Holloway and proceeded to recover the onside kick.
The momentum quickly stalled as Owen Cofer recovers a Timberwolves' fumble at the Lexington 39. This set up another Herndon to Herndon touchdown pass play, this time for 55 yards to extend the lead to 28-14. 
White Knoll's fourth lost fumble in the fourth quarter set up Herndon's final touchdown. This time, he raced across the goal line for a 13-yard touchdown run to put the Wildcats up 35-14 with 7:45 remaining.
Mathias added a short touchdown run and Smith scored an 8-yard run with 2:32 left to close out the scoring. 
Smith finished with 123 rushing yards and was 11-22 passing for 99 yards. He was also sacked three times, one by Logan Cripe who had a game-high 16 tackles. 
White Knoll (4-2, 1-0) returns to action at Chapin, while Lexington (4-2, 1-0) will have two weeks to prepare for 2-time defending Class 5A champion Dutch Fork on the road Oct. 12. 
"Going into an off week to get healthy, our kids will be up for it," Woolbright said. "We've scrimmaged (Class 2A champion) Abbeville, one of the best teams in the state even though they're in 2A. We've played good teams. Our teams don't really waver. It's kind of the way we play. We don't play pretty lots of times, but our teams stay even. Bad things happen, they still keep battling. I think they'll be ready for a big game."