| The biggest cheers of the night at
NorthRowan Friday came with 51 seconds remaining in the first quarter. After Jamel Alexander scored against South
on a 24-yard touchdown run, sophomore Kevin Rutherford trotted onto the field to attempt
another point-after touchdown kick.
The PAT— about a 19-yard kick
on which anything and everything can happen, and all of it bad.
North Rowan had one PAT blocked
and two missed so far this season. The rest of the time, head coach Roger Secreast
didn’t even bother, choosing instead to go 3-for-12 on two-point conversions.
Enter Rutherford, the soccer
player who already had one blocked PAT to his credit Friday night. Back came the snap,
down went the hold, the kick was up, and … it’s good.
It wasn’t a game-winning
field goal, but Rutherford got a few more high-fives and hugs than for your average point.
He kept North’s hot streak alive by tacking on another PAT later, then astounded
everyone in the stadium by booting a 30-yard field goal.
“Now we know when we get
close that we don’t have to gamble as much,”Secreast said. “Before we
didn’t have a choice, and now if we get it down to the 20 we do.”
The last exciting moment came late
in the fourth quarter with North ahead 29-16. Could Rutherford convert to make it a
14-point advantage?
No. The South rush came on and the
kick missed, but wait! There’s a flag on the play for roughing the kicker! But even a
yard closer didn’t matter as the next kick was blocked.
“I told him when that guy hit
him that he was going to get a red card for it,”Secreast said.
Northwest Cabarrus accumulated 164
rushing yards against West Rowan in its 21-14 SPC win on Friday night.
That’s not a staggering
figure until you look at what other teams have done — or more correctly, haven’t
— against the Falcons.
West’s first five opponents
averaged a meager 41 rushing yards per game, 25 percent of the Trojans’ total.
The Trojan horse was Shelton
Roseboro, who had 120 yards. The previous rushing high allowed by the Falcons this season
was 63 yards by South Rowan’s Ernie Wiggins.
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HOMECOMING: Ironically, Northwest
coach Glen Padgett has won two more games in Rowan County the past two weeks than he won
all last season on Rowan soil as head coach of the Salisbury Hornets.
Padgett was 1-10 last year with
the Hornets, with the lone win coming on the road at Lexington.
This year he’s won
back-to-back at South Rowan (27-21) and at West.
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TOUGHLEAGUE: Northwest’s
victory at West was a virtual must-win for the Trojans in terms of the state playoffs, but
Padgett didn’t put extra pressure on his team.
“This league is so good
— with six playoff caliber teams — that people are going to be beating each
other and keep beating each other” he said. “You can’t ever say to your
kids, ‘Well, if we don’t win this one tonight, it’s all over.’ The
trick is to get them to focus on one game at a time. Get them to feel like that
night’s game is the only one that’s important.”
Next week won’t be any easier
for Northwest (which plays at Concord) or West (which plays at Kannapolis).
Concord and Kannapolis are
unbeaten in the league. Northwest and West have one loss each. Central Cabarrus and East
Rowan are still in the chase for the three state playoff berths with two losses each.
Halfback Cal Hayes Jr., the
co-leader in county scoring, has scored touchdowns three different ways, and he almost did
it a fourth way on Friday night.
The exciting sophomore returned a
punt 79 yards early in East’s 38-0 romp at Harding, but his touchdown was nullified
by a penalty. He still got credit for 25 yards of the runback.
Later, Hayes broke loose for a
67-yard TD run, his longest run from scrimmage. It was his seventh TD of 35 or more yards.
Hayes has returned three kickoffs
for touchdowns of 95, 94 and 82 yards. His other long scoring runs from scrimmage have
been 57, 44 and 35 yards.
Hayes has rushed for 487 yards,
caught 14 passes for 137 yards and completed a 21-yard pass. He’s topped 200
all-purpose yards in three games and would most likely lead the county in that category if
the Post kept those statistics. His best all-purpose game was 254 yards against Piedmont,
when he ran back the opening kickoff 94 yards for a TD.
With all of the big games across
the state between undefeated teams Friday night, Arnold Solomon, the publisher of the
North Carolina Prep Football News, chose Lexington’s 21-12 win over Salisbury —
a contest between teams that are now 3-31-1 over the past two seasons.
Solomon said he had two reasons
for showing.
One, high school football is
played at all levels and with all records. High school football is high school football,
he said.
And No. 2? Solomon said he had
read Ed Dupree’s predictions in Friday’s Post that Salisbury would win. He had
predicted a Salisbury loss by 19 points.
“Iwanted to see who was
closer, me or Ed,” he laughed.
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SNAKEBIT: It was a night of
snakebit plays for the snakebit Salisbury Hornets Friday night.
A call here, an inch there —
nothing went right for Salisbury when it appeared the team might get untracked and win its
first game of the season.
On the opening drive of the game,
the Hornets faced a fourth-and-10. Quarterback Terry Johnson ran for a first down to the
Lexington 20 but clipping nullified the play, forcing a punt.
A 53-yard completion in the second
quarter was negated by illegal motion.
Penalties stopped two other drives
after interceptions.
“We had a couple of
breakdowns and a couple of calls didn’t go our way,” said Salisbury star Ken
Drye.
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UNUSUAL: How many times have you
seen this?
On two consecutive plays,
Lexington and Salisbury showed the futility of teams standing 0-7 and 2-4-1.
On a fourth down, Lexington went
back to punt. Salisbury roughed the kicker. But it was negated because Lexington was
offsides.
So the teams lined up and replayed
the down. Salisbury was again called for roughing the kicker — but wait! —
Lexington was again offsides, nullifying the play.
So the teams — you guessed it
— replayed the down and this time, the ball was punted with no flags.
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THEQUEEN: Salisbury’s
Homecoming Queen is Barbara Byarm. She was crowned at halftime.
Tim Cook’s 5-for-15
performance throwing the ball against North Rowan included quite a few ifs, ands and buts.
South’s junior quarterback
had a couple of nice throws in the Raiders’ first touchdown drive, but the passes
that got away were more on his mind after the 29-13 loss.
On South’s first series, Cook
overthrew a wide open Jesse Kirkman deep down the field for what could have been a
touchdown. Kirkman had defensive back Andre Byrd beaten a second time later in the first
quarter and watched Cook’s pass come closer but still a bit out of reach.
Finally Cook found Kirkman in the
fourth quarter — wide open, Byrd some 5 yards off — and the receiver slipped in
the wet grass.
“I can’t even explain
what that is,”Cook said. “It’s just him running to the right spot and me
passing to the right spot. We’re just rusty in that area.”
And those slight adjustments that
need to be made to turn incompletions into catches and losses into wins happen in high
school, college and professional football.
“That happens Friday,
Saturday and Sunday,”South head coach Rick Vanhoy said. “It’s a game of
inches. If we hit on one of those things could open up for us a little bit.”
Kannapolis kicker Rush Rollins
banged through 10 straight extra points in the Wonders’ 70-0 win over Piedmont
Friday.
Rollins has booted 29 straight
extra points over his last four games. His last miss was on the Wonders’ last
touchdown scored at South Rowan on Sept. 3.
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HEAVEN-LEE: Kannapolis linebacker
Josh Lee intercepted a pass and returned it for a TD Friday.
Lee had returned a fumble for a TD
earlier this year.
Lee also got his first extensive
duty at QB this season against Piedmont, playing the whole third quarter.
Unfortunately for Lee, the Wonders
already led 56-0 when he entered the game, so he didn’t attempt a pass.
Kannapolis didn’t go to the
air at all in the second half.
Davie’s Ricky White
wasn’t expected to play at all Friday night when Davie visited Central Davidson.
His knee was swollen and his new
brace wasn’t comfortable, and White just didn’t think he’d try to go in a
nonconference game.
But after watching for 16 minutes
and seeing his team fall behind, White reported for duty. He wound up carrying for a
team-high 85 yards in the War Eagles’ 21-9 loss, pushing his season total to nearly
900.
If his ailing knee hold up, White
will surpass 1,000 yards for the second time as a War Eagle in the near future.
He’d like to reach the
milestone on Friday when Davie takes on arch-rival West Forsyth.
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Ed Dupree, Ronnie Gallagher and
Mike London contributed to this notebook. |
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