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Chattanooga: RBs make rivalry debuts

By: Ward Gossett
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Joey Skogen
Sam Williams

Junior Sam Williams and senior Joey Skogen traveled different paths, but each running back will be playing in his first Baylor-McCallie varsity football game tonight at Finley Stadium.

The city’s rushing leader, Williams was sitting in the stands a year ago after forsaking football to concentrate on soccer.

“I watched a couple of the games, especially the Baylor-McCallie game, and I was missing (football) pretty bad,” he said this week. “It was at that game that I decided I wanted to come back.”

While Williams, who is closing in on the 1,000-yard mark already, missed last year by choice, Skogen was unable to play at McCallie after starting for two years at Tennessee Temple and transferring. He didn’t find out he would be unable to compete until the end of McCallie’s two-a-day practices in August 2007.

“It sounded early like the appeal was going to go through. I cried,” he said. “But (then-senior) Jonny Newman came up to me and said, ‘Make me better. Make the team better.’

“Last year was hard,” Skogen added. “I don’t want it to come off that I was miserable, though, because last year turned out to be the biggest learning experience I have had. There was a lot of work with little reward, and this year there is a lot more satisfaction. It was agonizing at first because I have never sat out. I have more of an appreciation for the game, but it was a humbling experience. It showed me what it meant to me and maybe that it meant a little too much. It’s a fun game and I need to enjoy it.”

Playing at Finley will be nothing new for Skogen. He was on the Temple team that went 11-0 before falling in the state quarterfinals. But playing in a Baylor-McCallie game will be quite new.

“I thought Temple-Grace was a rivalry until I saw a Baylor-McCallie game,” Skogen said. “I’d like to say it’s just another game, but it’s a division game and that makes it bigger, and then it’s Baylor-McCallie. I’m really looking forward to it.”

So is Williams, who is trying to make up for lost time.

“I played wide receiver as a freshman, but I felt soccer was probably going to be my sport and I needed to work on that,” he said. “It was a mistake. Well, actually it might have been good because I found out how much it meant to me. I missed it, but it was good in that I saw what I was missing if I didn’t play.”

Williams even has an appreciation for the grueling two-a-day practices of early August.

“You develop a closeness with the guys around you going through something like that, which the guys have said was the toughest at Baylor in years,” Williams said. “But two-a-days are the toughest thing anybody can do in high school athletics.”

He has enjoyed the mindset of this year’s Red Raiders.

“Nobody cares who gets the credit,” he said. “I don’t look at the numbers, but what I have belong as much to the offensive line as me.”

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