Trio off to great start for playoffs
There’s always a little extra electricity around the first Friday night of the prep football playoffs.
Knowing that, and believing that all 10 teams from the Chattanooga area who had earned the right to host a first-round game deserved to be highlighted, we made a plan for seven writers to cover individual games while I made quick stops at the three remaining schools — all in Marion County and located close enough for a whirlwind tour to be possible.
I can’t imagine there are many other counties where 100 percent of the schools not only reached the playoffs but had teams good enough to host first-round games, but that’s the case for Marion County, South Pittsburg and Whitwell, which all cruised into next week’s second round, as expected. Those three teams blistered their competition by a combined score of 134-13, with South Pitt and Whitwell earning mercy-rule wins.
That will assure at least another week for the coffee shop coaches to debate just how much further their teams will advance.
A team from within this football-crazed county has played for a state championship in eight of the past 10 years, and between the talent level and coaching on each sideline, there’s plenty of reason to believe at least one of them will extend that impressive streak.
Making stops at three separate playoff games was possible only because practically every resident in those three communities was off the roads and in the stadiums, assuring a traffic-free drive from town to town.
My first stop was at Whitwell, where the storms that moved through the region just hours before kickoff did nothing to dampen the mood on the home side of the stadium. Whitwell’s nine regular-season wins were already a school record, and Friday’s 65-6 clobbering of Clay
County gives the program its first 10-win campaign since 1991. If prep coaches had agents, this would be a good time for first-year Tigers coach Randall Boldin to hint he’s due for a raise.
Clay County had scored more than 30 points four times this season, but it was made clear early on that it hadn’t faced a defense the level of Whitwell’s. The Tigers had allowed an average of fewer than six points per game — only two opponents scored more than that in a game — including five shutouts.
On the game’s first snap, Clay County’s running back was blasted and fumbled, and Garrett Shrum recovered. Two plays later, Trace Condra scored the first of his two touchdowns and Whitwell built a 51-6 lead by halftime.
Clay County managed just 42 rushing yards and Josh Wingo finished with 145 yards and another two touchdowns.
I arrived at Marion County with less than a minute remaining before halftime, the Warriors ahead 14-0 but Westmoreland threatening to score before a potential touchdown pass was dropped on fourth down. The Warriors then opened the second half with an impressive drive that was capped by an impressive 27-yard scoring run from Jacob Saylors, who broke three tackles and proved why he was named a Mr. Football semifinalist earlier in the day.
That touchdown run took much of the fight out of the Eagles, who had their season ended for a third straight year by the Warriors. Saylors finished with 112 yards, giving him more than 600 in the past three games, and Marion won 28-7.
By the time I got to South Pittsburg, Class 1A’s topranked team was ahead 41-0 (which wound up being the final margin) to begin the fourth quarter — against a Monterey team that had scored 67 and 51 points in recent weeks and last week rolled to a 20-point win. Under coach Vic Grider, the Pirates have now won their past nine first-round games by an average score of 52-10.
Senior running back/ linebacker Sawyer Kelley had a huge night, rushing for 202 yards, two scores and a 40-yard reception to go with four solo tackles and a fumble recovery. The junior fullback/ linebacker, who was named a Mr. Football semifinalist earlier in the day, finished with 62 yards on just eight carries, scoring once, and was in on three tackles.
Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6293. Follow him on Twitter @StephenHargis.