Golden Tigers dispatch Ardmore 38-7 on Homecoming

After a three week road stretch, it was a true, welcome Homecoming for the Russellville High School varsity football team Friday night. In front of returning alumni and this year’s Homecoming court, the Golden Tigers dispatched region rival Ardmore (3-2, 1-2) 38-7 at Golden Tiger Stadium, improving to 4-1 overall and 3-0 in Class 5A Region 7 play.

“It’s huge. You can’t take a win for granted,” Russellville head coach Dustin Goodwin said after the game. “It’s another region win, and it gets us where we want to be in our region.”

The victory was Russellville’s ninth straight over Ardmore.

It was clear from kickoff both teams wanted to establish their running attack, control the line of scrimmage, and dictate the pace of the game. The Golden Tigers had just three possessions in the first half, but the home team took advantage when it had it, scoring touchdowns on two of those drives.

Junior running back Cameron Phinizee, as usual, helped move the ball down the field in both Golden Tiger touchdown drives in the first half—he had over 100 yards rushing at halftime. However, it was freshman quarterback Whit Goodwin, through the air and with his legs, that finished the scoring drives off. With just under two minutes remaining in the first quarter, Goodwin, from 10 yards out, found Javon Poss running a slant route in the endzone to put the Golden Tigers up 7-0; it was the senior wideout’s first touchdown reception of the season. Later on, in the fourth quarter, Goodwin would connect with Poss again to make it two.

“If we had a list of the ultimate team players, (Poss) is up there on our list,” Goodwin said. “He’s a selfless guy, he blocks every play, and he does a good job. When he gets opportunities he’s been able to make plays.

“It was nice to see him get into the endzone tonight, for sure,” Goodwin added.

Russellville’s second touchdown of the evening came in the second quarter. Down at the opponent’s 10-yard line again, Goodwin faked the inside handoff to Phinizee, a move the defense was forced to respect, before taking it himself outside to his left and into the endzone to make it 14-0 with 5:03 remaining in the half. 

The game against Ardmore marked the first time this season that Phinizee has not scored a touchdown in the first half. Goodwin said it showed that Russellville has the ability—even if not always perfectly—to get more players involved when the opposition keys on trying to limit the all-state running back.

“It was definitely good to spread the ball around more than we have to this point,” Goodwin said. “Credit to Ardmore. They were dead set on taking away the run, but that gave us some things in the air that we could take advantage of, and I thought we did a pretty decent job of that.

“There are some things that we could’ve hit that just slipped through our fingers or whatever, but all in all, the ultimate goal is to get the ball in the endzone,” he added. “There were times when we were forced to put it in the air because we had (rushing) touchdowns called back.

“We want to be multiple, but at the same time we know we have to be able to run the football to win football games and we were able to do that for a majority of the game.”

Up 14-0 heading into the second half, the Golden Tigers continued to dominate on the scoreboard. Russellville added a 36-yard field goal by senior kicker Manny Martinez early in the third quarter to make it 17-0.

Ardmore responded on the ensuing drive with a four-yard touchdown pass to make it 17-7, but that would be the Tigers lone score of the night. The Russellville defense, as it has in most games this season, forced multiple turnovers to cut out scoring threats by the Tigers. Sophomore linebacker Daniel Aycock picked up a fumble on a backwards pass late in the third, and senior defensive back Richard Scott recovered another fumble in the fourth quarter.

Phinizee finally got on the scoresheet in the third period of play. Following Ardmore’s score, Russellville put together a scoring drive of its own, finished off by an eight-yard rushing touchdown by Phinizee. The junior back, who reached the 1,000-yard rushing mark last week, capped the scoring in the game with a 16-yard touchdown rush midway through the fourth. Phinizee, for the third time this season, finished the game with over 300 yards rushing.

Unfortunately for Phinizee and his team, they could’ve finished with more points; on the night the running back had three rushing scores called back on penalties. The Golden Tigers, who finished with over 120 yards in penalties Friday night, have seen too much of the yellow laundry this season. It was a big blight on what was otherwise a well-played game against Ardmore.

“We’ve gotta do what we’ve gotta do to clean it up,” Goodwin said. “You don’t want to take winning for granted. We did enough to win the game, but at the same time we can’t win every game we want to with that many penalties, so we’ve got to clean things up a bit.”

Russellville will aim to step up its discipline in that regard as it heads into a bye week. The open date on their schedule will give the Golden Tigers two weeks to prepare and treat any troubles ahead of what could very well be the Class 5A Region 7 title game against No. 5 Fairview on October 4th.

“We’ve ultimately just got to address the issues that we have,” Goodwin said. “We’ll watch this one over the weekend and come up with a plan to address some of our issues and work to clean those up. Then we’ll start our film study on Fairview and start formulating a plan to take into the next week.”