Soddy-Daisy came out punching Friday night — both figuratively and literally — in hopes of slowing McMinn County’s fast-paced offense, but on a night that still had a strange haze in the air, there was nothing remotely strange about the final result.
McMinn’s first-place Cherokees took care of business with a 44-6 victory at Soddy-Daisy to set up next week’s winner-take-all battle with Bradley Central for the outright District 5-AAA crown.
“That’s what we came to do. It doesn’t get much better than having it come down to one game. That’s why we are here,” McMinn coach Bo Cagle said. “We lost our composure a little bit tonight, but I thought the kids handled the little bit of adversity well,”
The Trojans (2-7, 1-5) did their best to play keep-away, turning down the ball after winning the opening toss and then recovering an onside kick to open the slugfest. Soddy-Daisy then converted two fourth-down plays in a nine-play, 41-yard scoring drive for the early 6-0 lead. Quarterback Brett Standifer converted both last-down tries, including finding C. J. Brown in the end zone on a 9-yard scoring toss.
That was about the extent of the Trojans highlights, although there were plenty of low lights. The Trojans had three players ejected from the game after two separate on-field incidents, and they allowed 44 unanswered points in the rout.
“Sometimes you have to get punched in the mouth in order to respond, and I thought we did that tonight,” Cagle said after his team rose to 8-1, 5-0 in the district.
Cherokees tailbacks Kelvin Wells and Dre Sanders both had big evenings. Wells gained 89 yards on 16 carries, scored on a 3-yard run, had three two-point conversion runs and surpassed 1,200 yards rushing for the season. Sanders scored three TDs (38- and 9-yard runs and on a 44-yard screen pass) and had 89 rushing yards on just seven totes to pull within 45 yards of 1,000 for the year.
McMinn quarterback Corbin Powers had three TD passes, connecting with Clay Bennett (10 yards) and Forrest West (18 yards) to go along with Sanders’ catch. Powers was 6-of-10 for 152 yards as Soddy-Daisy tried to slow the run attack.
The game was chippy from the outset, but it broke into a full-blown melee just before halftime, resulting in four ejections. The game was so tense in the final half the coaches agreed to forgo the postgame handshakes between the teams, instead hugging one another afterward. The two squads were penalized 19 times for 239 yards with six personal-foul calls.
Standifer played exceptionally for the Trojans, gaining 60 yards on 12 carries as McMinn kept him on the run all night. Dillon Martin led the Cherokees defense with a sack and three tackles for lost yardage.
While McMinn will battle for the district title Friday, Soddy-Daisy will try to avoid a sixth straight loss when it travels to Warren County.