Ben Hampton applied the finishing touches to an outstanding football season Friday night, then contemplated the future.
After being asked about his college plans, West Rowan’s big, fast tailback said he’s primarily considering two schools:Richmond and Catawba.
The Spiders play at the Division I-AA level and play in the Atlantic 10 Conference. Richmond opened this season ranked 14th in the nation after making the second round of the playoffs the previous year, but is currently 2-7. The Spiders lost by one point at in-state ACC rival Virginia, fell by six at D-I Vanderbilt and lost 31-30 to Villanova before opening the A-10 slate.
Richmond plays its home games in the downtown 22,000-seat U of R Stadium.
Catawba, meanwhile, is a Division II powerhouse that also happens to be minutes from Hampton’s home.
“My family being able to watch me play or being on a higher level? I don’t know,”Hampton mused. “It’s going to come down to the last minute.”
There is one thing Catawba head coach Dave Bennett can take to heart. Hampton wasn’t scared off by Bennett’s participation in last week’s United Way fund-raiser, in which the Indians’ leader was decked out in a dress and all the fixings in an all-male beauty pageant.
“I liked the picture of him in the paper. He looked kinda cute in that,”said a laughing Hampton.
And it didn’t hurt Bennett’s recruiting?
“It might help him if they start recruiting cheerleaders or something,”Hampton replied.
North Rowan
Alfonzo Miller has 3,072 yards of total offense this season, making him only the second player in county history to reach the 3,000-yard plateau in a single season.
The other is county record-holder Mitch Ellis, who piled up 3,138 yards for the Cavaliers in 1994.
Miller has 4,531 T.O. yards for his career, good for fifth place on the county’s all-time list behind North’s Carvie Kepley (4,809), West’s Tim Hogue and North’s Ellis and Mario Sturdivant.
Miller has 2,040 passing yards this fall, only the fifth time a county QB has reached the 2,000 mark in a campaign.
Maybe most amazing of all, Miller’s rushed for 1,032 yards this year. He’s the 24th player in modern county history to rush for 1,000 yards in a regular season, but is apparently the first quarterback to do it.
East Rowan
East quarterback Drew Davis finished a fine career with 2,248 yards of total offense, good for a spot in the county’s all-time top 35 and had a rare four-TD game as a senior against North Iredell.
Davis’ days as a football signal-caller are over, but in his other life as a catcher he’ll be calling pitches for East’s baseball team this spring for the fourth season.
Twice all-county, Davis signed on the dotted line for a baseball scholarship to Elon University yesterday, making official an earlier verbal commitment. He says the shoulder he injured in the Mooresville game is just fine now.
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East’s defense yielded a scary 45.7 ppg. in six North Piedmont Conference games this season.
Even though East didn’t hold a single conference foe below 33 points, the Mustangs won one more game (four) than last season and equaled their number of conference wins (two) in a league that was stronger at the bottom than the old South Piedmont.
Overall, East surrendered 399 points, but that was still a slight improvement over last season’s 419.
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CAL UPDATE:Cal Hayes Jr. finished his career with 2,851 yards of total offense, good for 16th place in county history.
Hayes’ 1,253 rushing yards this season was the ninth-best effort for a single regular season in county history. Hayes owns three of the best 12 rushing nights in county history.
Hayes also had 67 career receptions, which places him 13th on the county’s all-time list. He’s 15th in career reception yardage.
“It’s kind of hard to believe it’s over,”Hayes said following Friday’s loss to West Rowan. “It’s been a long four years, but I think I did pretty good. I’m satisfied with what I did.”
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welcome to the big leagues: Thanks to a rash of injuries late in the year, Mustangs head coach Tom Eanes had to call up some reserves from the junior varsity.
That gave a pair of freshmen a chance to shine in Friday’s loss to West. East grabbed an 8-3 lead in the first half when Jimmy Eagle blocked a punt at the goal line that senior Matt Baker recovered in the end zone.
One series earlier, freshman David Blankenship pounced on a Falcon fumble near midfield. Blankenship has been on the varsity squad a month, while Eagle has seen two weeks of duty with the upperclassmen —filling in at linebacker.
“Jimmy didn’t weigh but 135 pounds —last year he was an offensive lineman at Erwin,”Eanes said. “He’s really had to learn under fire. The two teams he played against were A.L. Brown and West Rowan, so that’s tough.”
Salisbury
The Hornets had just 32 rushing yards in their finale against Ledford and never did get their ground game going except at West Iredell. Salisbury punched out 166 yards in that contest, and not coincidentally, got its only win.
The Hornets’ team total of 551 rushing yards has to be one of the lowest in county history. Salisbury’s team rushed for 10 fewer yards than West’s LaGrande Andrews, the county’s No. 7 rusher.
Top ground-gainers for the Hornets were Tyris Davidson (121 yards) and Titus Vinson (113 yards).
The Hornets scored just 78 points this year, eight more than third-place Lexington scored last Friday night.
PUMP YOU UP:Salisbury coach Mike Peavey huddled his players up after the Hornets’ loss to Ledford last Friday and told his team he was proud of its effort.
The speech didn’t last long, and Peavey told his players he would have individual meetings with them once the team got back to Salisbury.
What would his message be?
“Everybody needs to get in the weight room and get stronger, that’s the main thing,” Salisbury junior Matt Butler said.
The Hornets ended their season 1-10, but they had a lot of close, competitive games as the season wore on.
Peavey hopes to add to Salisbury’s win total by getting his players to work harder in the offseason.
“We have a good work ethic, we just have to get stronger,”Peavey said. “Physically, we’re getting beat up by teams right now.”
South Rowan
South’s amazing success at forcing turnovers got a bit more amazing on Friday night when it recovered two fumbles and came up with two interceptions in its 56-0 rout of South Iredell.
South’s defense entered the regular-season finale with 41 turnovers and exited it with 45.
Oddly enough, David Ritchie, a linebacker who wears No. 42, came up with turnover No. 42.
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PLATOON: As the county’s biggest school, South would seem the most likely to two-platoon, but it’s gotten tons of mileage from guys playing both ways.
Ritchie’s doing great things at linebacker and has also rushed for nearly 500 yards as a fullback.
Hard-hitting inside linebacker Jay Phillips, who has four fumble recoveries, is seeing increased time in the offensive backfield. Phillips has rushed for 190 yards and four TDs and has gotten 17 of his 31 carries in the last two weeks. With Henry Norman hurt, South’s used the 185-pound Phillips and the 190-pound Ritchie in the backfield at the same time the last two weeks.
William Van Wieren’s been a force all season on both lines, while O-line starter Zach Overcash has filled in on defense long enough to record two interceptions.
Defensive backfield stars Brad Lanning and Ricky Childers have contributed on offense, as well. Childers has three catches for 100 yards, while Lanning’s caught a TD pass, completed a key pass and carried three times for 36 yards.
Lanning is a triple threat. He’s also been huge on special teams, where he’s run back a punt and a kickoff for
TDs.
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UNSUNG:They haven’t gotten a lot of ink, but South’s gotten steady production from backs Ted Thomas and Brent Dendy. They’ve combined for 534 yards and seven TDs. Last Friday, the pair ran for 133 yards.
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GETTING HIS KICKS:Punter Patrick Edwards averaged better than 40 yards on his three boots Friday and has the county’s best punting average by a slim margin over West’s Steven Meseroll.
Davie County
The disappointment at draw-losing Davie has been hard to bear, but the 9-2 War Eagles still go down as one of the school’s best teams ever.
Coach Doug Illing is 29-17 in his four years, the second-best winning percentage (.630) of the nine men who have coached at Davie. Illing’s the first coach to win two conference titles at the school.
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HARD TO REPLACE: Davie’s defense, which allowed only seven TDs, will bring back seven starters, but it’ll be hard to replace Shrine Bowl linebacker Patrick Lowery’s 156 tackles.
Billy Riddle, a sophomore safety who was the No. 2 tackler, had 70 fewer hits than Lowery.
A.L. Brown
Wonder offensive line coach Todd Hagler can explain how the Wonders scored 130 points in their final two North Piedmont Conference games against East Rowan and North Iredell.
Hagler ticks off the names of Scotty Atwell, Randy Sloop, Justin Porter and Daniel Smith. The first three are reserve offensive linemen. Smith, also the punter, is the backup tight end.
“Early in the season, we’d go to our 2s (backups) and it might get ugly,” said Hagler. “Now, the 2s come in and there’s not much dropoff.”
The 2s were on the field for much of the second half of those recent NPC romps, but the Wonders kept scoring.
“We were just running basic stuff — isos, off-tackles, zones,” said Hagler. “No passes, nothing outside. Against North Iredell, Jonathan Peoples went 70 yards on an off-tackle play. That’s not supposed to happen, but we got a lot of people blocked and Jonathan just outran ’em.”
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KICKING IT:Wonder head coach Ron Massey is concerned with his kicking game as Brown heads into the playoffs.
“We’ve worked hard on the kicking game and it’s been pretty good, but things fell apart at North Iredell,” he said.
Adam Deloney did make the Wonders’ first field goal, but there was also a missed field goal and four missed
PATs.
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DEFENSE:The Wonders had a defensive player on the Shrine Bowl roster each of the last four years — Des Miller, Nick Gill, Des Williams and Lee Basinger — but there are no household names on the defensive side of the ball this season.
Still, the “D” has been performing admirably of late, especially considering the attrition rate. Coordinator Aubrey Hollifield thought he’d have five starters back from last season, but injuries and misfortune have taken their toll. Most of the season, Hollifield’s had just two of those five vets on the field. And one of those final two, lineman Chad Keller, is questionable for tomorrow’s game.
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REEVES IS READY: Hollifield said the best player on the defense lately has been junior linebacker Josh Reeves.
“Like a lot of our guys, he started out slow,” said Hollifield. “We simplified some things and he’s become the linebacker we thought he could be.”
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PERFECT:The Wonders were 2-3 early, but can now brag about a nonconference schedule that went 5-for-5 as far as reaching the state playoffs. Playoff squads Eastern Randolph, North Rowan, South Point, Concord and South Rowan were the Wonders’ first five foes.
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AREA
East Davidson coach Eddie Williamson resigned after his team’s loss to North Rowan on Friday.
The 51-year-old Williamson led the Golden Eagles the last 16 seasons. His record was 65-102, but he was a class act.
Williamson was carried off the field by his players after a 31-7 loss to the Cavaliers.
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TD: The Thomasville Bulldogs rallied from a 21-0 deficit to beat Albemarle 29-28 in their long-awaited 1A Yadkin Valley Conference showdown.
Thomasville’s Trevan (T.D.) Davis ran the ball 50 times for 361 yards, scoring three TDs and the winning 2-point conversion. T.D. easily won his matchup with Albemarle’s record-breaking T.A. McClendon.
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NO DONUTS FOR DUNCAN:Ledford back Brennan Duncan went over 2,000 yards rushing for the season in Friday’s win over Salisbury.
Duncan, 5-10, 180 pounds, finished the regular season with 2,015 yards.
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SPIDERS SPANKED:Concord turned itself in to the NCHSAA last week prior to the seeding process, admitting it had used an ineligible player in two games. The Spiders forfeited a nonconference win over A.L. Brown and a 3A South Piedmont Conference win over Sun Valley.
On the field, the Spiders were 9-2 and 5-1 in the SPC. The forfeits dropped them to 7-4, 4-2.
The change in record didn’t affect the Spiders’ getting the No. 2 state playoff berth from the SPC. However, it did cost them several spots in the West seedings and a first-round home game.
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BROKEN RECORD: Lexington quarterback Cory Holt is only a junior, so you have to wonder what he might do next season.
Holt took advantage of an overmatched West Stokes defense on Friday, tossing for a state-record tying eight touchdowns in a 70-20 rout. Lexington coach Billy Hunt left Holt in the game well into the fourth quarter so he could reach 2,000 passing yards for the season. Holt arrived at his destination with a TD toss with 5:59 remaining. He finished the season with 2,036 yards.
West Stokes coach Ed Pekar was not exactly delighted with Holt’s march to history, however.
“I know they were trying to get Holt his 2,000,” Pekar told the Lexington Dispatch. “But I thought they were running up the score. We’ll remember this.”
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