LANDIS— Rarely do tears flow so freely, from both sidelines, in Week 2 of the high school football season.

South Rowan’s fans rushed the field as if a state tournament had been captured and the Falcons dropped to the turf in despair after the Raiders’ emotional 31-24 victory in double-overtime.

“Golly! I’m speechless,”managed South quarterback Tim Cook. “This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever been in. There are no words to describe what this feels like.”

Words weren’t necessary. South played with an intensity that burned at unthinkable levels after showing up at school Friday morning and finding their home field marred by insulting graffiti. West’s players and coaches knew they had nothing to do with it, but it wasn’t something South had forgotten by game time.

Linebacker JoelReyes, one of several heroes in the second overtime, was still shaking with rage and wiping tears away even as the Raiders huddled in the end zone 10 minutes after the win.

“I can’t talk yet,”said the senior. “I’m still crying.”

West head coach Scott Young addressed his team after the final overtime period before the Falcons gathered in knots across the field, hugging each other and offering words of comfort.

“It was an emotional game,” Young said. “They came out and smacked us in the mouth early, then we pulled ahead, but we just couldn’t hang on.”

South (2-0) scored with 3:32 remaining in the fourth quarter to force overtime. After West’s Steven Meseroll and South’s Robbie Basinger exchanged field goals in the first overtime period, the Raiders lost the coin flip and went on offense. Tore’ Girty squirted through the line and made it all the way to the 1 before Falcon Terris Sifford stopped him. But KeithGarrett scored on the next play and Basinger converted the extra point to force West (1-1) into scoring seven.

“You want to be on defense first and know what you’ve got to do,”South head coach Rick Vanhoy said. “Knowing we had to go first offensively the second time, we felt like we had to get a touchdown. That limits their decision-making on their side of the football, and the defense stepped up and made four big plays.”

West quarterback Jared Barnette dropped back on first down and fired over the middle, only to watch Reyes stop dead in his tracks and break up the pass. Freshman Joe Jackson ran up the middle on second down and got stacked up after a 3-yard gain.

On third down, Barnette looked for Ben Hampton — who already had one TDreception — in the back of the end zone. But Ricky Childers was on the scene for another pass defense. The Falcons’ last gasp toss was turned away at the goal line by Brad Lanning and Anthony Rhyne, which brought hundreds from the standing-room-only crowd screaming onto the field.

“Seeing the student body behind us, them getting hyped because of our football team — that hasn’t happened here in a lot of years,”Cook said. “We’ve got things turned around. We’re going to keep winning. There’s no stopping us.”

The Raiders (2-0) looked invincible early on. A Dale Rice interception gave the Raiders the ball on the West 34-yard line, and South’s ground attack chewed up most of the distance in seven plays before Childers faked a handoff, dropped back and hit a wide-open Garrett from 12 yards out.

West fumbled on its next play from scrimmage and the Raiders needed only five plays to find the end zone. Childers looked for Garrett on the same play, but West had wised up. Instead, Girty floated unnoticed to the goal line and reeled in the 27-yarder for a 14-0 lead.

The reeling Falcons, who played poorly last week in a 7-6 win against Salisbury, got a huge spark to turn the game around. Jackson electrified the crowd in the final minute of the first quarter with a 58-yard punt return. West then tied it up with an 11-play, 72-yard drive late in the first half that culminated in Barnette’s 34-yard strike that hit Hampton in stride.

“Coach had talked to us all week about character. They got us down 14-0 and we had to come back and show character,”Hampton said. “We got in at halftime and he said he was proud of us and that we had to come out and take care of business in the second half. We just lost that spark.”

But not before West took the lead early in the third. Cook and Childers, who alternated at QB in the first half, clearly defined their roles Friday night in the final 24 minutes. Childers’ final pass of the night came in the face of a heavy rush. It landed in James Francis’ eager arms, and the Falcon senior raced 47 yards for a 21-14 lead.

South got a lucky break of its own in the fourth after its defense held the Falcons to three-and-out with five minutes to play. Matt Morgan dropped back to punt and the snap sailed over his head and into the end zone. He snatched it up and ran for his life, making it out to the 11, but the Raiders scored two plays later.

“Once again, our kicking game let us down,”Young said. “We’d like to get that one out of the end zone, but Matt Morgan was playing his butt off right there. It wasn’t his fault. He was trying to make something happen.”

“Things sort of evened out,”Vanhoy said. “We threw the pass to start out the third quarter when they picked it off and took it in. The offense started moving the ball late in the third quarter, and even though we turned it over (on a fumble), I think we had some confidence, and then we got the big break with the punt.”