Collierville keeps its cool in rare playoff win
COLLIERVILLE — Joe Rocconi has been around football a long time.
First as a player, both at Collierville and the University of Memphis, then as a head coach for more than a decade. The second-year Dragons coach has experienced postseason success everywhere he's been.
On the flip side, Collierville has been mired in a playoff slump for years. Not since 2016 has the team won a postseason game, according to Rocconi. No player on the current roster had won a playoff game. But in the Dragons' 30-20 win over Arlington (6-6) Friday in the second round of the Class 6A playoffs, it was Rocconi battling the nerves. And it was his players administering assurances.
“I'll be the first to say, I was nervous,” Rocconi said. “But at halftime, looking at their faces, they were cool and calm like they've been all year. They were like, ‘We're good coach.' So that made me feel a little bit better.”
That and a fourth-quarter surge that made Collierville's slim 17-14 halftime lead seem like a distant memory. After Arlington took a 20-17 lead late in the third quarter, the Dragons (6-3) rattled off 13 unanswered points – seven off the left foot of kicker Hudson Hollenbeck and six more courtesy of senior running back Dylan Powell, who iced the game with a 5-yard touchdown run that was set up by a crucial fumble recovery by the Collierville defense.
Arlington took a short-lived 14-7 lead in the second quarter on Gabriel Torres' 87-yard interception return for a touchdown. Less than 40 seconds later, that collected demeanor Rocconi said his team has embodied all season was back on display. Troy Martin rattled off a 40yard scoring run to tie the game and Hollenbeck's first field goal of the game (a 44-yarder with less than a minute left in the first half ) put the Dragons up 1714.
Rocconi said he's slowly getting better at trusting his players' resolve, especially as they've endured a season unlike any other. Collierville went almost a month after its season opener before playing another game, as the team endured a COVID-19 outbreak. Then, it went three weeks between games in October when a scheduled game versus Arlington was called off when the Tigers couldn't play.
“Of course, everybody's been dealing with the COVID,” he said. “So, I can't really separate that (from the story of the game), because we're all dealing with it in our own way. We've dealt with some other adversity. Really, our team – I don't know how to say this – but they weren't the easiest team to read early this season. But, then we find out, man, they're pretty cool and composed. That's really paid off in a lot of our games this year, including at the end here.”
Reach sports writer Jason Munz at jason.munz@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @munzly.