Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Tigers And Indians Play To 6-6 Draw
PRAIRIE GROVE — Prairie Grove’s seventh grade football team appeared on the verge of winning, but disaster struck when Stilwell returned a fumble for a touchdown evening the score.
The nonconference game came to an end in a 6-6 tie Thursday.
“We end up tied in a game that has four possessions each, so we gave up on two of ours; and we ran out of time on the fourth one,” said coach Prairie Grove coach Mason Pinkley. “They never stopped us, but everything was just self-inflicted wounds.”
Neither team scored in the first half. Prairie Grove broke the ice in the second half. Prairie Grove’s touchdown came on a waggle with quarterback Carson Simpson passing to wingback Ethan Richardson.
“Simpson got smoked as soon as he threw it, too,” Pinkley noted. “Then we got stopped on the 2-point conversion. Then we got stripped. They take it back to the house to tie it up. We stopped them going for two and that was pretty much it. The fireworks were over.”
Stilwell had a chance to win going for a 2-point conversion late in the fourth after scoring off the turnover, but Aaden Istre saved the day for Prairie Grove by deflecting a 2-point conversion pass preventing a reception in the end zone. Pinkley hailed the defensive stop saying Istre plays bigger than his physical stature.
“He plays above his height for sure, he’s a go-getter. He is short so people throw at him a lot, but I wouldn’t have him out there if I didn’t think he could get the job done,” Pinkley said.
Pinkley endeavored to get some reserves into the contest but the late turnover proved costly with Stilwell running the ball back for the tying touchdown with only 3:29 remaining and the clock running as it does continuously during seventh grade games.
“We can move the ball, if we can stop hurting ourselves we’ll be fine. I was pleased because it looked a little crisper, the offense moved faster, but we got to hold onto the ball,” Pinkley said. “We had some backups in when the strip sack happened because we were up 6-0 with not much little time left. I thought we could run the clock out, but then we got stripped and taken back to the house. That really hurt us.”
The Tigers began their last possession with 2:15 showing on the running clock and were forced to pass then suffered back-to-back sacks. Pinkley burned a time-out with 23 seconds left on third down, but the Tigers weren’t able to convert and the game ended in a 6- 6 deadlock. There are no overtimes for nonconference games.
“We had 25 plays, we ran sweep 16 times,” Pinkley said. “It was there, we just couldn’t punch it in the end zone.”