Boyd Buchanan’s young team has learned some tough on-field lessons this season, but those tests paid off Friday with arguably the biggest upset of the night in Tennessee prep football.
The Buccaneers, who have more freshmen and sophomore starters (five) on each side of the ball than seniors (four), got clutch performances from multiple players late to battle back, then hold off Christian Academy of Knoxville, 36-35, handing TSSAA Division II-AA’s second-ranked team in the Tennessee Sports Writers Association state poll its first loss of the season.
“For us,” said first-year Boyd Buchanan head coach Charles Fant, “we had to find an answer to the question, ‘How do you handle a tough loss?'”
Fant’s team was coming off back-to-back DII-AA East Region defeats, the second by four points to Chattanooga rival Silverdale Baptist Academy two weeks earlier, but with the benefit of an open date after that, the Bucs were able to heal some injuries and were prepared for a back-and-forth, four-quarter battle.
“When you lose, your job is to learn why. Then you prepare to play better,” Fant said. “That was the major thing that we focused on. Watching the film, we felt like CAK was very similar to Silverdale, so we told our kids that the game would likely come down to the very end and that the experiences we’ve had should help us.