HICKORY — You probably participated in a sack race as a kid.You remember. You stuck your right leg in a
burlap sack and your cousin stuck his left leg in the same sack and together you happily
hopped toward some faraway finish line at the family reunion.
That sort of sack race is not to
be confused with the just-concluded football SAC race in which undefeated Carson-Newman
finished first and 10-1 Catawba took second.
Nor should it be confused with the
sort of sack race that John Milem and DeVonte Peterson have waged all season and finished
Saturday afternoon at Lenoir-Rhyne’s Moretz Stadium.
Milem and Peterson’s sack
race basically involves turning quarterbacks upside down.
L-R’s Milem, a 6-foot-7,
290-pound sophomore defensive end who is a product of West Rowan High, the U.S. Marine
Corps and a whole lot of Gold’s Gyms in between, lost this sack race by a nose to
Catawba’s DeVonte Peterson, a 6-4, 250-pound junior tackle who is a product of
Clinton High and good home cooking.
Milem entered Saturday’s
regular-season finale with 14 sacks. That’s how he finished. Peterson entered with
14.5 sacks. That’s how he finished too.
Milem, who has a sense of humor as
well as a sense of how to dismember a quarterback, was disappointed that he had just
endured a sackless Saturday, but took it pretty well.
“I came in here today with
the idea of me and Peterson going head-to-head,” said Milem. “I figured
we’d trade sacks all day long. But it didn’t happen. I guess they had me
game-planned and we had DeVonte game-planned.”
So the scheduled main event ended
in a 0-0 tie. That’s like Holyfield and Lewis going 15 rounds with neither party
throwing a punch.
Peterson did get close enough to
love-tap L-R’s freshman QB Bret Johnson to the ground on several occasions, but only
after he’d released the football.
Milem made a couple of
bone-jarring hits on running plays and actually ran down Tribe QB Mitch Ellis a few times
in the open field, but he never came close to getting that precious 15th sack that would
have propelled him past Peterson.
“Well, Mitch can move pretty
good,” explained Milem. “And you have to remember I’m a defensive end. All
they had to do was run away from me to the other side. Mitch was taking the snap and he
was heading in the opposite direction from me.”
Catawba coach David Bennett said
his team was ready for Milem, and talked in pregame about keeping Peterson as the floor
manager of the Sacks department store.
“Milem’s a big old boy
and I tell you, he’s a very talented athlete,” said Bennett. “He’s 290
and not an ounce of it is fat. But our guys think our guy, DeVonte’s, the best, so we
wanted to stop John today.”
When Milem set up in his standard
position at right end, he was confronted with a double team from Catawba’s 295-pound
mound of might, Brian Hinson, the left tackle, and the Tribe tight end, usually Sean
Pearson.
“Hinson’s an
All-American and showed it today,” said Milem. “He’s a great football
player just like DeVonte is. And Catawba’s a great team with a great coach.”
“Milem move around a
lot,” said Bennett. “He was going all over the place. He went right side and he
went left side. He went 3-technique and 5-technique. But we protected Mitch.”
Lee Daugherty, a Lenoir-Rhyne
junior guard who played at South Rowan, said the Bears offensive line got some
tongue-in-cheek pregame advice from Milem.
“John said if a couple of
Catawba guys got through we had to make sure we blocked Peterson,” said a chuckling
Daugherty. “He said we’d better get DeVonte even if we had to let those other
guys go.”
The L-R line did a fine job. It
limited the Tribe to three sacks and shut out Sweet Pete, but Milem couldn’t close
the gap.
“I knew all week I was just
that one half-sack behind DeVonte,” saidMilem. “My dad said he read in the Post
that ‘the SAC sack crown was going to be on the line.’
“But I could tell it was
going to be tough even when I was warming up. The Catawba offensive line guys were looking
at me and catching my eye like, ‘Yeah, 99, that’s the one.’ I knew they
were setting up for me. I give them all the credit in the world. Today, they shut me
down.”
n
Assistant sports editor Mike
London covers Catawba for the Post. |
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