Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Junior Tigers Engineer ‘Flop Flip’
DEFENSIVE STOP TRIGGERS GO-AHEAD SCORING MARCH FOR PRAIRIE GROVE
PRAIRIE GROVE — Needing a stop, first Prairie Grove got Pea Ridge’s offense to flop, then flipped the field by driving for a touchdown and conversion taking a lead they never relinquished.
Tiger football fans reveled in a game-changing inversion of the colloquial “flip-flop” with the flop occurring prior to the flip. The junior Tigers erased a 6-0 halftime deficit early in the third quarter on Tate Cox’ 5-yard touchdown run followed by Jace Edwards’ 2-point carry on the way to beating Pea Ridge, 24-6, in the season opener for both teams on Thursday at Prairie Grove’s Tiger Den Stadium.
“The defense stepped it up right there coming out [of the half] because we had to kick to them. They got a stop and got the ball and then the offense started rolling,” said Prairie Grove head junior high coach John Elder.
Braxton Breshears scored on the first play of the fourth quarter from five yards out and Prairie Grove tacked on a 2-point run to assume a 16-6 lead with 7:56 left.
Pea Ridge had a chance to answer, advancing the ball 33 yards to Prairie Grove’s 31, but on first down a shotgun snap went awry for the junior Blackhawks and a blitzing Baylor Kissinger hit the quarterback when he tried to retrieve the ball, taking him out of the play. Ty Slaughter recovered for Prairie Grove 13 yards behind the line of scrimmage.
Pea Ridge head junior high coach Jacob Meyers lamented missed opportunities that could have given Pea Ridge a bigger halftime lead.
“Our kids played hard, especially in that first half; a couple of misses here and there, drops, I think hurt us,” Meyers said referring to a dropped ‘pick six’ on Prairie Grove’s second play from scrimmage, a dropped 2-point conversion pass, and a dropped potential touchdown pass.
“But overall I was proud of the way we played and I really feel like we wore out there in the second half. We got some injuries and some things we’re dealing with, some young kids playing for us. They played hard for us, but I think we kind of ran out of juice there at the end,” Meyers said.
Prairie Grove mounted a six play, 56-yard touchdown drive to ice the game on Luke Bannon’s 22-yard dash around right end. Cale Bray ran in the 2-point conversion pushing Prairie Grove’s lead to 24-6 with 1:19 to go. Elder praised the sustained drive and 2-point conversions.
“That’s what we like to do, hopefully get good at and keep going and sometimes try to make the game go fast,” Elder said. “We got all three of those tonight which is huge. I mean 2-point conversions are huge.”
The first half looked like a different ball game with a miscue throwing a monkey wrench in Elder’s game plan out of the gate.
“We came out hoping to get the clock going ourselves and then we fumbled the opening kickoff and that kind of turned things around for us right there so we struggled the first half a lot,” Elder said.
Prairie Grove couldn’t get a handle on the opening kickoff and Pea Ridge recovered at the junior Tigers’ 35. Prairie Grove’s defense kept them in the game. Alex Abshier batted down a pass in the end zone on fourth-and-four from the junior Tiger 14 to halt Pea Ridge’s opening drive off the turnover.
“The first half it was pretty sloppy, they didn’t listen very well, had some mental mistakes and turnovers,” Elder said.
Pea Ridge dominated time of possession in the first half but could only generate six points on a 27-yard touchdown pass caught by Wright behind the junior Tiger secondary with 5:19 remaining in the second quarter. The junior Blackhawks marched 57 yards in 12 plays twice overcoming penalties. A 2-point conversion pass failed, leaving the visitors with a 6-0 advantage.
Prairie Grove dug in defensively after a punt went sideways then bounced backwards before it was downed after a net of 13 yards beyond the original line of scrimmage. Cox stopped a quarterback keeper on second down, then laid a blindside hit, forcing an incomplete pass on third down. On fourth down eighth grader Ethan Richardson got to the Pea Ridge quarterback on a stunt, sacking him for a six yard loss.
Late in the half Prairie Grove fumbled the ball away again after stopping the junior Blackhawks on downs in the red zone. Tristan German recovered for Pea Ridge but the junior Tigers roared to life on defense. Heat on the quarterback forced a holding penalty and 17 yards were marked off, putting Pea Ridge in secondand- 26. Wyatt McNatt recovered a fumble when Richardson made another sack ending the threat.
Meyers was disappointed in the outcome after watching his team run off 29 plays offensively compared to 10 for Prairie Grove in the first half.
“It’s not the way we wanted things to go. We didn’t play the way we wanted in the second half, but everything’s an opportunity to learn so we’re going to watch video, we’re going to run, we’re going to do our thing and hopefully as we grow and get our kids back we’ll improve over the next week or two and then we’ll fix the problems that we had,” Meyers said.
Up next the junior Tigers play host to Farmington in the junior high edition of the annual “Battle of 62” gridiron rivalry.
“Farmington, I haven’t looked at the film very much yet so we’re going to start looking at the film this weekend and try to get ready for them. I know they’re going to be tough. They always are. It’s a big rivalry game so it will be a good one,” Elder said.