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GRANITEQUARRY — This was strictly a business trip for the South Rowan football team.
The Raiders tuned out all the opening night hoopla, rolled up their sleeves and went to work. By quitting time they had racked up more than 400 yards total offense and dropped a 56-7 anvil on host East Rowan.
“Hard work. That’s what we owe this game to,” left guard Brent Sheets said after South scored on six of its first eight possessions and spoiled East coach Tom Eanes’ debut. “We were blowing people off the line, moving our feet and executing our blocks real well.”
South’s offensive line literally threw a block party, and the guest list included running backs Tore Girty and Keith Garrett. Girty carried all of five times but gained 113 yards and scored four touchdowns — the last on a 95-yard kick return to open the second half. Garrett, who appeared fully recovered from an early-August car accident, had a game-high 139 yards rushing on 12 attempts and two TD’s.
“We felt if we could get our backs, with their speed, to the second level and past the linebackers, we could pick up good yardage and maybe even score,” said winning coach Rick Vanhoy.
He figured right. In the first half alone, South had five runs from scrimmage that gained at least 30 yards. The longest was Garrett’s 70-yard burst that gave the Raiders a 35-7 lead late in the second quarter.
“Coach told us to pick up our fakes, to make them more pronounced,” Garrett said. “He looked right at us and said, ‘Then you can do whatever you want to.’”
From the East sideline, watching South amass 394 yards on the ground wasn’t a pretty sight. Poor defensive technique led to missed tackles which led to more Raider breakouts than a minimum security prison.
“We played like crap,” said Mustang cornerback Antwain Blakeney. “They were good but not that good. We were just disorganized. And a little too cocky.”
Eanes was equally shocked. Standing outside the morgue-like locker room, you didn’t have to play his words backwards to decipher some hidden message.
“They physically smashed us and we didn’t respond,” he said. “They whipped us on both lines. They did everything better than we did.”
The game’s decisive play may have been the opening kickout, which was fumbled by Blakeney and recovered by South’s Anthony Rhyne on the East 10-yard line.
“I judged it wrong,” said Blakeney, a junior who later recovered a fumble and partially blocked a punt, setting up the Mustangs’ lone score. “I saw it all the way, but it was so wet out there. My gloves were wet and it just slipped through my hands.”
On South’s first play from scrimmage, Girty plowed through a hole on the left side and reached the end zone standing up. The game was 10 seconds old.
“When our backs got into the secondary, there was no stopping them,” said Sheets, a 255-pound senior. “We were determined to open big holes for them.”
You could have parked the QE II in the space they opened for Girty four minutes later. The time the shifty senior took a handoff from starting quarterback Ricky Childers and raced 30 yards up the middle for a 14-0 lead.
Then after East sliced its deficit in half on Jacob Moore’s 6-yard run, South turned up the volume, scoring on four of its next five possessions and mounting a 42-7 halftime edge.
“We’ve been on that other sideline,” said Vanhoy. “We know what that feels like. It’s a tough situation for the coaching staff and the kids when nothing seems to go right and the other team seems to be getting everything right.”
Before the night was through Vanhoy had used every player on his roster and a few who weren’t. Ten different Raiders carried the ball at least once. Defensively, Rhyne led a unit that stifled East’s hambone attack, limiting the ‘Stangs to 96 total yards.
“I thought we’d be able to play with them,” said Eanes. “Then right away, we made mistakes early. That hurts, but you’ve got to learn to adjust to that. Just because they scored quickly, it doesn’t mean the game is over. There’s still 47 minutes to go. You’ve got to keep fighting and plugging and we didn’t fight hard enough.”
South, meanwhile, finds itself battling to wake up the echoes of ‘99. “Last year we felt like we had a good team coming out of the gate and it took us eight weeks to prove it,” said Vanhoy. “We went 8-4 and didn’t earn any respect. I don’t know if this game gives us respect, but it tells people we’ve got a pretty good football team.”
NOTES: Rhyne added a second fumble recovery with 1:25 remaining in the first half. He also had an interception nullified by a penalty and a sack called back. ...East’s Adam Lambert recovered two fumbles. ... The Mustangs used two punters. Jordan Shinn booted five times for a 30.6 average and Hunter Kepley launched three for a 39.0 mark.
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