The Red Bay High School varsity football team (7-3, 4-3) ended its Class 1A Region 7 race in fourth place Friday night after falling on the road to Meek High School (6-3, 5-2) by a final score of 30-22 to close out the regular season. The defeat marked the Tigers’ third in their last four games.
The first quarter and a half of the game were 18 minutes or so Red Bay would like to forget. Two special teams errors—a high snap over the head of the punter and a bobbled snap on a punt—combined with a turnover by the offense gave Meek great field position on its first three possessions. The hosts did not waste the opportunities and scored three touchdowns to jump out to an early 22-0 advantage.
In a hole now, Red Bay woke up late in the second quarter and ended the shutout by putting together a scoring drive capped by a short touchdown run by junior Davian Colburn with 3:28 left before halftime. After the failed two-point conversion attempt, RBHS went into the break trailing 22-6.
“The biggest thing is we’ve got to be able to get focused and be ready to play in the first half,” second-year Red Bay head coach Tyler Jeffreys said. “Anyone who has watched us play all year would say we don’t play our best ball in the first half, but in the second half we’re in the game.”
Coming out of halftime, Red Bay scored two unanswered touchdowns to tie the game up at 22-22 early in the fourth quarter.
Assisted by a poor Meek punt, the Tigers, with a short field, were able to punch the ball into the endzone via a short touchdown run by junior running back Joshua Thorne to make it 22-14 in the third quarter. Then, after another Meek punt, RBHS was able to drive the ball again and, with 11:11 remaining, even the score on a second Thorne TD dash, this one from 38 yards.
The momentum was shifting in Red Bay’s favor, but the hosts did not lay down. After the game-tying touchdown, Meek organized a methodical, time-consuming drive that ate more than eight minutes off the game clock and culminated in a six-yard go-ahead touchdown rush by running back Hunter Wyatt. The score put the home team up 30-22 after the successful two-point conversion.
With 2:29 remaining, the Red Bay offense, starting from its own 42-yard line, still had plenty of time to push the ball down the field and score another tying touchdown—but it wasn’t to be. After gaining one first down and penetrating Meek territory, quarterback Sawyer Humphries pass, intended for sophomore receiver Cayson Collins, was jumped and picked off by Meek’s Riley Baldwin.
“We made too many mistakes, and when you play good teams and you make mistakes, unfortunately you don’t end up on top most of the time,” Jeffreys said.
Jeffreys added that, in his opinion, there isn’t much daylight between his team and the other top teams in Region 7 like Hackleburg, Addison and Meek, but those mistakes he’s mentioned have resulted in the disparity of the results.
“I think we’re two or three plays away throughout the year from being in a better situation,” he said. “In our region I don’t think there’s a big difference between us and everybody else, it’s just that we’ve made too many mistakes. Some of those are mistakes from inexperience, some are mental mistakes, but they’re mistakes we’ve got to overcome.
“We’ve got to limit mistakes from here on out if we’re going to do what we say we want to do,” he added.
The defeat to Meek confirmed Red Bay’s place as the fourth seed in the region, which means the Tigers will have to travel to undefeated Winterboro, ranked No. 3 in the state, for their first round playoff game on Friday, November 6. The good news is Red Bay will have a bye week between now and then to get ready for a Bulldog squad Jeffreys called “one of the best teams” the Tigers will play.
“Winterboro is obviously a great team with three Division I athletes on their team, so it’s hard to prepare for that, but we’ve got two weeks to do it,” Jeffreys said. “We have a great opportunity to go down there and give our best effort to beat a really good team, but we’ve got to be prepared. Fortunately we’ve got two weeks to do that and come up with the best plan we can.”