Ellwood Christian’s season opened with a disappointing 32-6 loss to Wilcox Central on Friday night. 

Eagles quarterback A.D. Tate connected with Derrick Dixon for a 30-yard touchdown, but that was Ellwood’s lone highlight of the night. Ellwood coach Mike Stokes said turnovers and penalties ended up dooming his team.

“Everything went wrong. We didn’t play good,” Stokes said.

“We probably had four or five fumbles. We didn’t play good at all. We made a team look ten times better than what it was.”

The win was Wilcox’s first since beating Choctaw County in 2013.

The Eagles trailed 20-6 at halftime. The Jaguars scored all five of their touchdowns through their running game.

“They got all their touchdowns off of our turnovers, high snaps over the head. We had about three or four of them,” Stokes said. “We just didn’t tackle well. If we had tackled and played like I thought we could play, we couldn’t win.”

Stokes said Wilcox fumbled the ball several times as well, but the Eagles were unable to recover any of them.

Ellwood will play at Francis Marion Friday night.