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Scores and Photos: Friday Night High School Football – Aug. 28
DUNLAP, Tenn. – It was a short ride home, so the Whitwell Tigers didn’t have to relive the reality check too long.
“We got outplayed. Flat-out,” said coach R.C. Helton on the heels of his fifth-ranked Class A team’s 42-14 beatdown Friay night at the hands of Class 3A’s Sequatchie County.
Played before a full house, the win was the second of the season for the Indians and first-year coach Adam Caine.
The Tigers were flung from their lofty perch, which was enhanced by last week’s lopsided pounding of Grundy County.
“It wasn’t so much our guys coming back down to Earth as it was playing against a good 3A team that’s well-coached with some good players,” Helton added.
The outmanned and outsized Tigers just couldn’t seem to get off the starting line. They were outnumbered – with seven or eight players going both ways – and didn’t get their second first down until just 9:26 remained in the fourth period. Unable to handle the Indians’ size and physicality, they endured a running clock for much of the second half.
The Indians’ effort drew special praise from Caine.
“That group of guys that I have, I love them and they respond to every challenge I throw at them,” he said.
Operating behind a patchwork offensive line, senior quarterback Houston Mainord, a Grundy County transfer, threw a pair of touchdown passes – to Colby Reed and Austin Stephens – and added a 1-yard scoring run.
“At one point early in practice we had three linemen out, and then on the third play last week (a narrow win over South Pittsburg) we lost Billy Morrison, and that hurt us,” Caine said. “But they’re starting to gel. Houston came here with the reputation as a gunslinger, but we’ve kind of turned him into a dual-threat guy. To make this offense work at full capacity, you’ve got to have a little bit of a quarterback run game, and he’s giving us that.”
Reed, who hauled in a 35-yard pass from Mainord for Sequatchie’s first score, also had a 61-yard touchdown run that boosted the Indians into a 27-0 lead with 3:03 left in the first half. He broke one tackle and ran through another before tight-roping his way down the home sideline.
Brandon Rudd also scored on an 8-yard run to give Sequatchie a 13-0 lead with 0:07 left in the first period.
Ten seconds into the final period, a 10-yard run by backup quarterback Ethan Barker boosted the Indians’ lead to 42-0.
Playing mostly against Sequatchie reserves, Whitwell picked up its two scores in the final 5:35 of the game – a 6-yard run by Clay McHone and a 14-yard pass from Cody Ingrassia to Travis Nolan.
The teams last played in 2012, when Sequatchie won 35-6. The win Friday night was Sequatchie’s sixth straight in the Sequatchie Valley rivalry.