Greenwood finds footing, wins 10th state title
LITTLE ROCK — Lake Hamilton had control of the Class 6A state football championship game for just over six minutes Saturday night at War Memorial Stadium.
After that, Greenwood (14-0) found its footing and put up five straight touchdowns to win the team’s 10th state title and third in the past four years with a 49-24 thumping of the Wolves (11-2), that was quite different from their meeting at Wolf Stadium four weeks ago.
Lake Hamilton jumped out to a 10-0 lead, its only hiccup in the opening four minutes being unable to score a touchdown in its first drive as kicker Alex Hurtz easily hit the 37-yard field goal attempt.
The Wolves appeared to be ready to dominate the game as Trent Singleton stripped Jayden Jasna on the ensuing kick return. Jamarrion Byrd recovered the fumble at the Bulldogs’ 14, and after a short run by Owen Miller, Miller caught a pass from quarterback Grant Bearden for the first touchdown of the night.
Lake Hamilton’s defense then held the Bulldogs to just 15 yards on their next drive. The Wolves offense then moved the ball 38 yards on five plays before Bearden suffered his first of four devastating sacks.
“There’s a lot of big plays (we should have made),” said Lake Hamilton head coach Tommy Gilleran. “We should have scored down here. Our quarterback missed this when it was down here, and it was, it was 14-10. Our kid’s wide open in the end zone, and our quarterback missed him. It would have been 17-14 going into half. And after we didn’t score, they scored in one play or whatever down the sideline. You can’t, in a big game like this, you can’t give up that type of play.”
Greenwood allowed just one more yard on the drive before scoring on its next three drives of the half, the last coming just 51 seconds before the break.
The Bulldogs had gone up 14-10 almost six minutes earlier and had stopped the Wolves at the Greenwood 17, at which point many teams would have coasted the final seconds of the half.
“That’s not our style,” said Greenwood head coach Chris Young. “It’s not how we play, but it’s just a tribute to our kids. They made plays, and young man made a great throw, (Luke) Brewer got loose down the sideline, and, I’ll tell you what, that was the difference in the game. You know, they missed a passing play right before that, had a guy open in the end zone, and then we we scored on that, and that was difference in the ball game, I really feel like.”
After a pair of runs by Hunter Wilkinson, quarterback L.D. Richmond found Brewer on a 71-yard bomb that left the
Bulldogs with an 11-point lead and plenty of momentum going into the second half.
“We were running the ball, and, you know, I figured they just thought we were just going to run it out, and he calls our fade route,” said Richmond, who was named the MVP. “And I was like, ‘Whoa, let’s get it.’ So I see we’ve got our guy pressed up over here, and Luke is a hell of an athlete — he can get open on anybody — and so I just dropped back and just let it fly. He went and got it.”
Layne Warrick, who was sidelined most of the season after breaking his collarbone in August, got to reprise his role in his final high school game, taking over from Bearden in the fourth quarter.
The move seemed to motivate the Wolves’ offense, which averaged over 10 yards per play on the first drive of the period to score their first touchdown since the first quarter. They scored again on their next drive — three plays, 54 yards — on a 31-yard run over the right tackle by Kendrick Martin for their final points of the night.
Despite the outcome, Gilleran is cheered by the fact that many of his key players will be back next season.
“This class in junior high won three games,” he said. “This senior class, they won three games against three bad teams, and they made it to the finals their senior year. I feel pretty good about the other groups. The other groups, actually won the conference in a conference with Conway and North Little Rock and all the big schools, and so we feel like we have … three really good groups coming together, so we feel like we have a chance to be pretty good the next couple years.”