RINGGOLD, Ga. – Northwest Whitfield used two touchdown passes and a pair of scoring runs from sophomore quarterback Luke Shiflett to defeat Ringgold 28-1 in a weather-shortened high school football game Saturday night.
A midgame thunderstorm delayed the game nearly two hours with the visitors leading 21-18. Per GHSA rules, the game could not go past midnight, and coaches Josh Robinson of Northwest and Robert Akins of Ringgold agreed, since it was a nonregion game, to stop the game at 11:30.
“It is a shame we had to stop because Coach Akins and myself would have played the entire game if we could, but GHSA rules dictated we had to stop,” Robinson said.
Shiflett, in his first start, passed for 218 yards and had touchdown runs of 13 and 8 yards. His 65-yard touchdown pass to speedster Will Blanchard (three catches, 146 yards) in the third quarter essentially sealed the win.
The Bruins led 21-3 midway through the second quarter following Shiflett’s second touchdown run. However, momentum turned when Garrett Morris intercepted a Shiflett pass two minutes later at the Ringgold 35.