Several of Salisbury’s seniors lingered on the field Friday night, not quite ready to walk away after their final game.
Ledford’s 48-13 win ended the football careers of more than a dozen Hornets.Tears were shed, hugs exchanged — and a whole bunch of handshakes extended to Ken Drye.
“Ken Drye is one of the best players that I’ve seen, and I just told him that after the game,” Ledford head coach Dickie Cline said. “If he wants to transfer over right now, we’ll take him. I believe he could play for us somewhere.”
The laughing Cline may only have been half-joking. His team battles High PointCentral on Friday for the Central Carolina Conference’s second and final 2Astate playoff spot. Take what Drye did for the Hornets the past three seasons and add it to a championship-contending team and who knows what you get?
As a sophomore during Salisbury’s 1-10 season, Drye began making a name for himself. In the Hornets’ first seven games, he had six fumble recoveries and an interception. According to Post records, six fumble recoveries in one season ties a county record shared by a half-dozen others.
Raymond Daugherty took over the head coaching job in 1999 and needed about a month to realize that Drye the linebacking star could make a difference on the other side of the ball, too. So the 6-foot, 185-pound Drye moved to tailback and has been in on every Hornet play ever since.
He rushed 89 times for 399 yards in the winless 1999 season and also caught 16 passes for 154 yards. On defense, he picked off four passes and recovered three fumbles, scoring twice — a 19-yard INT return and 60-yard scamper after grabbing a loose football.
As the featured running back this season, Drye currently is fifth in the county in rushing with 692 yards in 118 attempts: a 5.9 yards per carry average. He’s also ninth in the county with 20 catches for 236 yards.
Friday night, Drye rushed for 110 yards on 17 carries and scored from 6 yards out, his 13th touchdown of the year, tied for first in the county.
Defensively, he had just one interception —and returned it 70 yards for a touchdown against North Stanly.
“Ken Drye is a super football player. I just hope he gets an opportunity to play on Saturdays and you get to watch him some more,”Daugherty said.
A number of schools from Division I-AA and Division II have shown interest, as has Clemson, Drye said, which likes him as a safety. In between campus visits, Drye will be hitting the books to make sure he’s eligible. He fell just short on his first attempt on the ACT and is awaiting word of his latest effort.
A few more points and Drye will be suiting up again. But not as a Salisbury Hornet.
“We’ve got to turn our stuff in,”he said Friday. “It’s been great, but it’s hard. I was real proud of everybody on our team.”
The race for the Rowan County rushing title heads to the final week with Falcon Jonathan Diggs trailing South’s Keith Garrett by 60 yards.
The two workhorses, among the few county offensive stars who haven’t missed games with injury this season, have had almost identical carries — Garrett, 169 and Diggs, 168. Both runners have posted six 100-yard games.
Both Garrett (940 yards) and Diggs (880) still have a shot at 1,000-yard seasons with a good Friday effort by Garrett or a great one by Diggs. Garrett will be going up against a huge Mount Tabor defense, while Diggs will be trying to chew up yards against a fired-up Central Cabarrus team.
TERRYON: With Horatio Everhart, the county’s leading statistical receiver out of action for Friday’s 28-17 Falcon win over Sun Valley, West QBJared Barnette turned to senior receiver David Terry.
Terry responded with five catches for 80 yards. It was his second big night of the season, as he also shone in West’s win over A.L. Brown.
Terry has 22 catches for 252 yards on the year. Half those catches and 164 of those yards (65 percent of his season total) came in the games against the Wonders and Spartans.
The Cavaliers didn’t run up the score when they defeated North Stanly 41-0 on Friday to clinch at least a share of the 2A Central Carolina Conference title and a home game for the first round of the state playoffs.
North held a 35-0 halftime lead over the struggling Comets and made it 41-0 when reserve Aundray Russell ran the second-half kickoff back 91 yards for a TD.
Coach Roger Secreast played his reserves the entire second half, and North made only two first downs the rest of the night.
The game was probably one of the shortest in history, because the clock ran all the time from late in the first half until the end of the game.
“It was by mutual agreement,” said Secreast, knowing it’s been a long season for the 1-9 Comets.
Wonder back Eric Caldwell won back the hearts and minds of many K-Town fans in Friday night’s 21-7 win over Northwest Cabarrus with two huge catches — one an 18-yard fourth-down reception that set up a touchdown, the other a 30-yard grab.
Caldwell, who wears the No. 20 bequeathed to him by former star Nick Maddox, has rushed for 650 yards this season, but much of it (148 against Sun Valley and 122 against East Rowan) has come in the Wonders’ more lopsided games.
There was also a three-fumble night at Central Cabarrus that got some folks down on him.
But Caldwell responded last week with a huge game in a big game for the first time this year, holding on to the football despite numerous big hits by the Trojans.
“Eric had a great game, made some really big catches for us,” said Wonder coach Ron Massey.
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HOME, SWEETHOME:One of the things that has made this season tough for the Wonders — if a 9-1 season can truly be called tough — is that they’ve been away from Memorial Stadium so often.
Prior to last Friday’s game with Northwest, the Wonders had been road warriors in six of nine contests, including visits to West Rowan, North Rowan, Statesville and Central Cabarrus.
The only home tilt before Friday that had featured Memorial Stadium’s standard electric atmosphere had been rival South Rowan’s visit on Sept. 1.
The only other visitors to K-Town had been Harding and Piedmont, teams which don’t bring big crowds because of distance and a lack of recent football tradition.
“It does seem like we’ve been playing road games all year long,” said Massey. “The Piedmont game was Homecoming for us and it was an OK crowd, but theHarding game (two weeks ago), it was just dead here.”
There won’t be any more dead ones in 2000.
Concord visits Friday, an appearance which will attract at least 10,000 crazed fans. Any additional home games for the Wonders will be state playoff games, which are always frenzied.
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NORUSH:The Wonders played Friday without kicker Rush Rollins, who was injured during the previous day’s soccer match with Concord.
Reserve receiver David Henry filled in and successfully booted three PATs.
Rollins’ status for Friday is doubtful. Ironically, Rollins’ 32-yard field goal gave the Wonders a 10-7 win at Concord in 1999.
Speaking of Concord, you could have won millions in Las Vegas had you known prior to Friday night that East would rush for 226 yards in its 27-7 loss to the Spiders.
After all, Concord held West to 20 rushing yards and Salisbury to 35 yards on the ground in games earlier this year.
The offensive explosion by the Mustangs was their third-best rushing effort of the season and their best since SPCplay began.
The catalyst was Jordan Shinn, who rambled for a season-high 87 yards; quarterback Drew Davis, who had 46 positive yards against the Spiders’ sack-happy defense; and Blake Abernathy, who picked up 44 yards in just three carries.
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WEIRDNUMBERS:A quick look at the stats shows that East’s offense has done OK in terms of grinding out yards this season, but has had a tough time putting points on the board.
It’s been a story of poor field position and turnovers.
Amazingly enough, East (2-8) has actually churned out 16 more yards per game than South (7-3), but the Raiders are scoring five more points per game than the Mustangs.
East has outgained Salisbury by 37 yards per game this season, but the Hornets have also outscored the Mustangs.
You had to feel for former Salisbury coach GlenPadgett, whose 6-4 Trojan troops were knocked out of the playoff hunt with Friday’s loss to the Wonders.
“We played a great football game,” said Padgett. “But we also played a great football team. Kannapolis is just outstanding.”
So is everyone Padgett has lost to. The records of the teams that have beaten the Trojans are: A.L. Brown (9-1); West Rowan (9-1); Concord (8-2); and Mooresville (9-1). That’s a combined 35-5.
The killer loss for the Trojans, who still have most of the offense that reached the third round of the 3A state playoffs in ‘99, was a double-OT setback to Concord.
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