A Hall of a time

A Hall of a time

Pats drop Warriors for first league win

Sports Editor As he sat in his office with the rest of his coaching staff, Jed Davis rubbed the top of his head as he pondered an answer to what’s seemingly a simple question.

“How important was this win for your team?”

“It was what the soul needed,” responded the third-year Marion head football coach after a slight pause.

After his team had lost second-half leads in losses to Blytheville and West Memphis over the past two weeks, his team rallied to post its first conference win of the season, dropping Little Rock Hall 47-7 after trailing 7-6 after the first quarter last Friday night at Patriot Stadium.

“They’re (Hall) is athletic, and we knew that going in,” Davis continued. “I was proud of the kids big time. After an emotional loss like we had last week, it would be easy to have some sort of let down. I didn’t see that tonight, and you have to give our guys a lot of credit for that.”

Marion’s (2-3 overall, 1-1 6A-East) offense churned out just 288 yards against the visiting Warriors (2-3, 0-2), but their defense limited their visitors to just 222 yards in all, while also forcing 3 Little Rock Hall turnovers, and scoring with 2 of them.

“Coaches laid out a great gameplan for us this week,” said Marion senior linebacker Michael McNeeley. “We went over everything, every formation. It was very strategic and I felt like we were pretty prepared.”

The first Marion defensive score came with the Pats ahead 13-7 in the second quarter. On a 3rd-and-6 play from Hall’s 14-yard line, Patriot linebacker Anthony Switzer broke on an errant pass by Hall’s Jaden McGraw, intercepted it and returned it 17 yards for a touchdown, and gave the Pats some breathing room at 20-7 with 4:14 remaining in the first half.

“That was a shot in the arm for us,” Davis admitted. “To that point, it was a one-score game, and defensively, we’d seen a few busted assignments.

Our defense comes through, makes a big play and it really started rolling from there.” Ahead 20-7, Marion got the ball back late in the first half and embarked on a 9-play, 60-yard drive that would send the teams to the lockers heading in opposite directions.

Senior running back Tom Young rushed 4 times for 55 yards on that drive, capped off by a 13-yard touchdown sprint with just 13 seconds left on the clock for a 27-7 Marion lead at the break.

The Patriots cashed in on their first drive of the second half when junior quarterback Peyton Walker connected on 3 of 4 passes for 95 yards, which was highlighted by a 60-yard touchdown pass to classmate Taylor Brown with 7:40 in the third for a 34-7 lead.

Walker was 17-for-27 passing for 206 yards, 3 touchdowns and 1 interception, while Brown led all receivers with 6 catches for 98 yards and that score. Three plays later, Marion’s defense slammed the door when senior safety Kabryn “K.B.” Williams stripped a Hall ballcarrier and sophomore cornerback Kenta Jones scooped-andscored from 26 yards out to push ahead 40-7.

The final Marion score of the night came when Walker found senior receiver Charles Stokes from 4 yards out late in the third quarter to claim a 40point lead and start the game’s running clock for the rest of the game. That rule comes into play whenever a team claims a 35point lead in the second half.

“The thing that was exciting to me was that we had a great week of practice,” Davis said. “That’s what was exciting to me, that we put together a few good practices. For some reason with this group, we had trouble doing two or three good practices, but we did that this week.”

As the calendar flips to October, the schedule has Marion at just 2-3 overall at the halfway point of the season, but McNeeley thinks that the win against Hall could be a starting point for his Patriots.

“If our leaders and seniors keep working, and we want it bad enough, we can do whatever we want to do. The sky is the limit,” says the linebacker.

Marion will hit the road to play Searcy, who is currently 2-0 in the 6A-East

after a 27-20 win against West Memphis last week. Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. The game can be heard on 92.5 FM.

By Chuck Livingston