On Friday night I got an opportunity to do something I don't get a chance to do a lot during football season and that was to just go watch a football game without having to worry about reporting the game. I'm not complaining about reporting games, in fact I love getting to do that, but when you are reporting a games you can tend to get caught up in reporting a game and sometimes you don't get to appreciate the performances that you are seeing.
On Friday night I decided to go and watch the Chesnee at Broome game, it has almost become my Week 0 tradition as my Bulldogs rarely play that week. As I was on my way to the game I had an idea of what type of game I would see, a game that would last about two hours and I would be meeting everyone at Papa's Breakfast Nook by around 10:00, and boy was I wrong. A game that I was expecting to be a quick low scoring game turned into a 47-42 scoring fest. The game that I watched had two outstanding performances from Chesnee quarterback Isaiah Ellis and Broome's D'Marco Jackson. I am sure you have all heard about the performance from Ellis this week as he has won a lot of local player of the week awards, and deservedly so, but the performance I want to talk about is that of Jackson. I have been told a lot by people that I trust that Jackson, an Appalachian State commitment, is a player that I needed to go see play a football game. When I went to watch the game I was expecting to see Jackson running the ball well but it was his overall performance that amazed me the most. First of all, watching a lot of 4A (now 5A) football over the years I am used to players playing only one position in a football games and you rarely see the type of players that people have often referred to as an "ironman" type football player. An ironman football player is one that plays both offense and defense and rarely sees the sidelines during a game. D'Marco Jackson is one of those type players. On Friday night Jackson not only started at running back but he also started at linebacker on defense. A lot of times you see this happen because a team doesn't have enough players to be competitive without a player doing this but with Jackson it seems he is such a great player on both sides of the football that it would be tough to justify not having him on the field. After the game Friday night I knew that Jackson's numbers would be impressive but when I figured the stats up I had to double check my math to just make sure that my Boiling Springs math was correct. Jackson on Friday night rushed for 244 yards on nineteen carries with five touchdowns plus twenty yards receiving and if his offensive performance wasn't great enough on its own, on defense he also had sixteen tackles, two sacks and one interception. SIXTEEN TACKLES!!! The performance on offense or defense would have been worthy of player of the week honors but the ironman performance he displayed on Friday night was one of the best performances I've seen in a while and this was just Week 0. If this performance was indicative of what Jackson is going to do this season, then the Broome fans have a lot of great performances ahead of them to look forward to. In fact, if Friday night was a precursor to the football I'm going to get watch this season I can't wait to see how this season plays out. Football season has officially begun and if its anything like Week Zero, it's going to be one heck of a season!!!
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JamesBoiling Springs native, lover of sports and food. 15x SC Press Association Award Winner. I do some sports writing and radio every now and then. Archives
April 2020
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