WVSSAC Super Six Football Championships

Class AAA
Sunday, December 2 , 2007
By SHAWN RINE- The Intelligencer & Wheeling News-Register

Nearly everyone, at some point in their lives, has found themselves face-to-face with a bully. The kid on the block who’s bigger and stronger than everyone else and knows it.

He beats and beats on you, trying to take your will. But at some point, regardless of the outcome, you have to stand up and fight to gain respect.

The St. Albans football team found itself in that position Saturday afternoon at Wheeling Island Stadium, as staring back across the field was Parkersburg, who in its 103 years of football has been West Virginia Class AAA’s version of that bully.

The Red Dragons (12-2) knew they would be pushed by the Big Reds, so they delivered a preemptive strike, taking the opening kickoff and driving 80 yards in 12 plays for a touchdown.

St. Albans stood toe-to-toe for most of the first half, not surrendering a first down until the 4:20 mark of the second quarter. But Parkersburg (13-1), somehow managed to tie it up just before halftime despite being outgained 126-63.

And in the second half, the beast showed its toughness one final time and went on to capture the AAA state championship, 22-15 before an estimated 6,500 fans.

The underdog gained that measure of respect from the bully, but in the end his strength was too much.

It marked the first time Parkersburg has won back-to-back state titles in its illustrious history, and it was the Big Reds’ 11th football title overall — tying now-defunct Cereda-Kenova for the state record.

‘‘Very few times do you get to put your name in the history books, especially when it’s involving Big Reds football,’’ Parkersburg coach Bernie Buttrey said. ‘‘With something like this, someone might do it again and hopefully someone does it again soon, but it’s been a hundred-and-three years.

‘‘It’s indescribable.’’

But so was the Red Dragons’ first-half play.

Coach Derek Christian’s club clearly won the battle up front, but couldn’t come up with one big play to widen their lead. Ahead 6-0 after the extra-point attempt was blocked on their first touchdown, St. Albans sustained a pair of drives into Big Reds territory, only to see them snuffed out by inopportune penalties.

Even when they did something right, things went wrong.

On a fourth-and-7 play from the Parkersburg 37, Big Reds punter Tyler Warner had his punt blocked by the Dragons’ Gary Fleck. It took a second for Fleck to find the ball, but when he did he beat Warner in a race to the end zone where he recovered the ball for what appeared to be a touchdown.

However, Fleck didn’t gain possession before his legs went over the end line. So instead of a touchdown, St. Albans had to settle for a safety and an 8-0 advantage.

That’s the way it remained until there were 52.2 seconds left in the first half. And 11-play, 58-yard Parkersburg drive culiminated in quarterback Andy Thomas’ 20-yard touchdown pass to Wes Ankrom.

Thomas found Stephen Roush in the back of the end zone for the two-point conversion.

‘‘We talked about it,’’ said Thomas, who was named the Samuel A. Mumley Player of the Game for his team. ‘‘(We said) ‘‘these guys don’t have a state championship yet and they’re excited. They are going to play with us in the first quarter and maybe the whole first half.’

‘‘I tell you what, they were tough up front — they were very tough up front,’’ Thomas said of the Red Dragons. ‘‘I think you could ask any one of our linemen and our backs how impressed we were with them up front.’’

Buttrey kept his players in the locker room for the full 20 minutes of halftime. He didn’t come out and say what he told them, but it obviously made a difference.

The Big Reds took the opening kickoff, marched 66 yards in nine plays — all runs — and scored when bruising tailback Matt Lindamood went in from the 1 for a 15-8 Parkersburg lead. Lindamood had 46 of his team-high 86 yards rushing on the drive, coming off a first half in which he ran 11 times for 23 yards.

St. Albans was forced into three-and-out on it’s first drive of the second half, and a short punt set the Big Reds up at the Red Dragons’ 39. Those would be the only three plays of the quarter for St. Albans.

Eight plays later, with the Red Dragons looking for a run, Thomas found Roush in the back of the end zone for a 5-yard score.

‘‘Third quarter, we never could really come up with a stop and I thought that was probably the difference in the ballgame,’’ Christian said. ‘‘The fact we didn’t stop them, they took the ball (and scored), we turn around and its three-and-out.

‘‘That probably was the deciding factor in the game.’’

Buttrey agreed.

‘‘Our guys tightened up a little bit. Our coaches made some great adjustments at halftime.

‘‘Our first two series in the third quarter is what won the game for us.’’

But St. Albans wasn’t done, yet.

After forcing a Big Reds’ punt, the Red Dragons drove 49 yards before facing a fourth-and-2 at the Parkersburg 26 with less than a minute remaining. Everyone in the stadium probably figured sophomore Marcus Guy, who ran for 113 yards on 28 carries to take Player of the Game honors for St. Albans, was getting the ball.

So Christian went with a quarterback sweep to the left that was shut down.

Thomas kneeled on the ball twice and pandemonium erupted.

‘‘He’s a champion — check his record,’’ the coach said of Thomas. ‘‘He’s lost one football game since he’s been the quarterback — we’re 27-1 with him as the quarterback.

‘‘He’s won three wrestling championships, he’s won a national wrestling championship. He’s a champion and that’s why we’re where we’re at.’’

St. Albans didn’t make the three-hour trip to Wheeling to bring home a runner-up trophy. But Christian was quick to point to that respect factor, also acknowledging this could be the start of something special.

‘‘Our kids worked tremendously hard and put in a lot of time,’’ he said. ‘‘Hopefully we’re getting something going here. Hopefully our younger kids and our community can feed off that.

‘‘I think we showed we can play with them.’’