Nobody is perfect and no team is either.
Success is often defined by how you handle failure. On the football field, coaches often talk about not letting one team beat you twice...that is, beat you on the field, then stay in your head and affect your performance the next week. Neither team competing for the Class A Division II state title sports an undefeated record, but both squads believe their early-season stumbles helped get them where they are today. Lamar, the upperstate champion, plays an ambitious out-of-region schedule every year. When they lost early to AAA Hartsville (who finished 12-1) and Darlington (who went 6-5) it wasn't a surprise. Both schools have more than four times the student enrollment of Lamar and the Silver Foxes aquitted themselves well on the field in both contests. What did come as a surprise was the team's Week 5 game against Andrew Jackson. Though the Volunteers are a AA team, they've struggled for a many years in terms of wins and losses and came into the contest just 1-4, their only victory a relatively close one over Great Falls. They'd played McBee in the second week of the season and were whipped 84-14. It looked like a last, easy tune-up for Lamar before the region slate began. The week of that game coincided with the arrival of intense storms and rain that would cause widespread flooding across the state. With the heaviest rain set to begin on Friday, the game was moved up to Thursday. "We didn't know until Thursday morning that we were playing that night," said Silver Foxes Coach Corey Fountain. "We aren't used to dealing with change. We like to keep a regular routine." What unfolded that night was a shocker. On a sloppy field with rain coming down, Lamar struggled to hold onto the ball and couldn't get the Volunteers offense off the field. Andrew Jackson won that night 16-14. So surprising was that score, some people (myself included) double-checked to make sure someone with a fat thumb hadn't hit the wrong button as they tweeted the score. Fountain said the game being moved up suddenly played some role in the outcome, but said Andrew Jackson had to deal with the early start too. "The bottom line is, we just weren't ready to play. Andrew Jackson outplayed us that night," Fountain said. "That was a bad game," said running back Tre Ceasar. Some teams would've been shaken by such a loss. Fingers would be pointed, dissention would set in and the the loss would linger. That didn't happen to Lamar, though. The team knew it was capable of better, knew it had a chance for a special season and set out to prove it. "That was really a wake-up call for us. We rallied around each other, we strapped it up and decided to get after it," Fountain said. Blowout region wins against Lewisville, C.A. Johnson and Great Falls followed. That brought a match-up with McBee, at the time the number one team in Class A. The Panthers had rolled Lamar the year before and came in averaging over 60 points a game. They didn't leave the field against Lamar with those gaudy numbers intact. The Silver Foxes ended McBee's winning streak and stay atop the Class A polls with 21-13 victory. It was the lowest points output for the Panthers in more than two years. Lamar earned a number one playoff seed and has trucked its three post-season opponents. Without the self-examination and rededicated focus of the loss to Andrew Jackson, that might not have happened. C.E. Murray, the lowerstate champion who will battle Lamar for the state title Saturday, doesn't have the long, illustrous football pedigree of the Silver Foxes. Since beginning play in 1972, the War Eagles have had only seven winning seasons and two playoff victories. Coach Brian Smith suffered a tough go in his first season (2013) with a 2-8 record. The losses were rarely close. Last year, the team won three games, made the playoffs and were much more competitive in their losses. Thanks to a very generous friend of the program, the team was able to hit the 7-on-7 circuit over the summer, including a mutli-day stay in North Carolina. For some players, it was the first time they'd left Williamsburg County. Smith knew there was talent on hand, had seen first-hand how hard his players had worked and thought the summer trips would bond the group. On top of that, the team, whose run-heavy offense isn't really a hit with pass-ever-down 7-on-7s, had some success against much larger schools. "We were playing Spartanburg, Valdosta...the biggest of the big. Some of those schools brought 100 players with them to the competitions. That's about how many boys we have in our entire school," Smith said. Everything came together when the season started. The team equalled its 2014 win total in three weeks, ripping off wins against Kingstree, Lincoln and Hemingway. That brought a match-up with perrenial power Cross. Smith said his team played its worst game of the season in losing 28-6. "Cross is a good team and we got a little bit of a big head. We thought we could roll over them," said sophomore quarterback Darius Rush. Rush said the loss woke the team. Nobody could be overlooked or taken lightly, no matter how well the War Eagles were playing. "We learned from that," Rush said. The hard lesson paid dividends quickly. The next week, C.E. Murray took on AAA Manning. It was supposed to be a War Eagles home game, but the school actually had to sell the contest to Manning to help athletic budget ends meet. C.E. Murray had never beaten their rival from down the street before, but on September 18, they did, emerging with an 18-12 win. Another first, a win over Carvers Bay, followed the next week and the team was off to the races. Not even flooding that put many players in an emergency shelter, had others trapped in their homes and kept the team off the field for almost a month could derail the War Eagles. They won out, won a region title, and blew through their first two playoff opponents. They did so by paying attention to details...they take care of the ball, they play solid defense and don't beat themselves with dumb penalties. They had a real fight on their hands in the lowerstate finals, but beat a good Lake View team with a field goal at the buzzer. Detrell Rush, a senior linebacker and tight end, said he knew after the Manning win that his team could not be stopped. That signature history-making win came just seven days after the team's only loss. It showed a team that was rising quickly the daily focus necessary to keep from falling back to Earth. Now, Lamar and C.E. Murray will meet in the state title game. Neither team had a perfect season in terms of their record, but for one, a perfect ending is still possible.
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November 2021
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