The longest run of the day by a Tyner Academy ball carrier did not count in the game’s statistics, but it was one the Rams community had waited 25 years to see.
Moments after Tyner won the school’s first football state championship in a quarter-century, senior Trae Ruffin took the Class 2A BlueCross Bowl’s gold ball trophy and sprinted from midfield toward Finley Stadium’s visitors bleachers with his teammates chasing behind.
Ruffin’s victory lap in front of an impressively large section of Rams supporters ended 60 yards from where it began, near the corner of one end zone with the entire team circling around the hardware to celebrate what they had just accomplished.
“I didn’t know I was going to do that until they handed us the trophy, then I just knew that we had to take it and run it over to our people to let them see what we did,” said Ruffin, who had four catches for 57 yards and two touchdowns — his team’s first score and the one that put the Rams ahead for the first time.
“It really didn’t sink in, what we had done, until I touched that gold ball. I was up until 5 o’clock in the morning just thinking about this. I was too excited to sleep. We’ve been dreaming about this for so long, working hard every day. From early morning workouts to practicing after dark, our whole team deserves this because we really went out and did it.”