Week #3 of the high school football season offered up a couple of surprises in the final scores as #1 and #1 in the Class AAA MetroNews Power Rankings both went down! In the game that featured the #1 ranked Cougars of Capital, Head Coach John Carpenter’s ballclub had the lead late in the game against the #3 ranked Knights of Cabell Midland but could not hold on as Head Coach Luke Salmon’s team from Ona, WV found a way to power into the endzone. Senior Devin Stapleton collected the game-winning score on a 42-yard touchdown run with 44 seconds left (his second score of the night), giving the Knights the seven-point victory. Trailing at halftime, the Knights went into the locker room still confident they could leave the home field of Capital with a win. On GAMENIGHT, we were joined by Cabell Midland’s senior tight end and defensive end and he told us the adjustments his ballclub made at the half. “We just made some adjustments with our linebackers and defensive line, shifting them around,” said senior Cabell Midland defensive end and tight end Reese Donahue. “We changed it around a little bit to get some more speed out there to make sure that we held (Capital quarterback Tyrhee Pratt) and all of those great running backs. We knew they had some great players back there, so we had to try to do our best to match what they had.” It was certainly a big win for Cabell Midland who will play their first home game of the season this Friday night when they welcome Beckley Woodrow Wilson to Ona. For the Capital Cougars, they will travel to Wood County to take on the Big Reds of Parkersburg. The other upset featuring the #2 team in Class AAA came when South Charleston traveled to Spring Valley to take on the winless Timberwolves. Head Coach Donnie Mays’ Black Eagles were coming off a tough five point loss the week before to Capital and that old adage about a team beating you twice certainly proved true for South Charleston. However, in fairness you have to give some credit to the Timberwolves because even though Brad Dingess’s team is very young, they have been getting better each week and things fell in line for them Friday night against the Black Eagles. Spring Valley will go for two in a row when they travel to Jackson County to battle the Ripley Vikings. For South Charleston, they will try to break out of their two game slump as they return home to face Nitro.
Now on to the amazing amount of points scored this past weekend! A total of 61 games were played this past weekend across the state and in those 61 games, the teams combined for 3,215 points. The winning teams scored 2,356 and the losing teams combined for 859! That’s an average score in all games played of 39-14! The most points scored by a single team in a winning effort was the 87 George Washington put on the scoreboard as they outdistanced St. Albans 87-8 and Greenbrier East was close behind as they defeated Shady Spring 82-14. The most points scored in a losing effort was garnered by Fort Hill, Md. as they lost to Keyser 48-41. By the way, a great MetroNews tip of the hat to the Golden Tornado as that win over Fort Hill was only the second one since 1938!
Don’t forget to tune in to High School Sportsline this Wednesday night from 7:06 to 9:00p as we will talk with several coaches from around the state and certainly this Friday night from 9:30 to Midnight it is another edition of GAMENIGHT as we recount the scores from week number four of the high school football season.
Remember both shows can be heard and seen at wvmetronews.com!