The high school football season – except for a few postseason all-star games and showcases – came to a close last weekend, with five scintillating state championship games being played in the Georgia Dome. Countless players have had coming-out parties on the Dome turf over the years, and it was no different for the ’09 Championship Weekend. Here’s a few performances that caught our eye.In the weekend’s first game, Buford topped Calhoun for the second straight year in the Class 2A final, 13-10. In what would set the tone for a mostly defense-oriented slate of games, the Wolves showed great tenacity in the secondary in order to shut down a high-powered passing attack led by QB Nash Nance and WR Da’Rick Rogers. A young group that used its quickness and double teams to shut down the all-world wideout, Buford held Rogers, who was having a monster postseason up to this point, to 69 yards and one touchdown.
Yes, Jarrett Davis broke the state finals receiving record. But the engine for the Patriots offense – as it has been all year – was RB Rajion Neal, who made his claim as one of the state’s top two or three running backs in his final high school game. Neal went for 166 yards on only 19 carries and provided perhaps the most electrifying run in the championship games, slashing for a 21-yard run to ice the game against Clarke Central.
Nick Marshall absolutely took over the turf in the Class A game, leading his Wilcox County team to another playoff upset win and a state title. The rare dual-threat quarterback that could pass as either a pure runner or a pure passer, Marshall was a sharp 14-of-23 for 244 yards in the title game with 87 rushing yards, and made all the big plays down the stretch to seal the 30-21 win. .
Blake Sims and a number of other Gainesville players will spend their future Saturdays playing football on prime-time TV, but it was an unheralded Peach County Trojan that stole the spotlight from the higher-profile Red Elephants. Not only did Luke Crowell, a 5-foot-8 linebacker and running back, score what was the Trojans’ only touchdown for much of the game, he intercepted a Blake Sims pass at his team’s 21-yard line and took it back to the Gainesville 30. But he made the play of the game when he batted down Sims’s two-point conversion pass that would have won the game with no time left in regulation.
In what was interestingly the least suspenseful of the title games, Camden County smacked Northside-Warner Robins in what conceivably could be Northside coach Conrad Nix’s last high school game. The gamebreaker for the winning Wildcats was wingback Ean Days, who found other ways to contribute than through head coach Jeff Herron’s hard-hitting Wing T attack. Days took the opening kickoff back 96 yards for a score, setting the tone for the blowout that would ensue.
An honorable mention must go to Wilcox County wideout Tay Porter. He’s a 5-foot-8 sparkplug that had a good overall game on Saturday, but will go down in history because of a legendary juggling catch he made to set up a Patriots score late in the game. Porter ran under a 45-yard pass from Marshall, twisting his body in order to get a hand on it. Knocking the ball back towards him as he fell to the ground, Porter finally hauled in the pass on his back at the Savannah Christian 5-yard line. The catch set up the go-ahead score for Wilcox with 8:18 left in the fourth quarter. You can check out the one-minute clip of just the play at GHSA.tv.
Photo courtesy of Don Jackson/Photographic Arts. Ewalt can be reached at aewalt@scoreatl.com.
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