Ball-carriers kept busy and excelled
Monday, December 5, 2005
By Rick Ryan - The Charleston Gazette
WHEELING — It may be remembered as the year of the running back at the Super Six.
Ball-carriers stole the spotlight at the state’s annual high school football championship weekend, with three runners going over 200 yards — one in each game.
The highest total, fittingly, was turned in by Nitro senior Josh Culbertson, the state’s most productive running back in history. He churned out 223 yards on 32 carries in the Wildcats’ agonizing 27-24 overtime loss to Morgantown in an epic Class AAA title contest. He lost a fumble at the Mohigans 12 to end the game.
Culbertson, who three times led the Mountain State Athletic Conference in rushing, broke state records this year for most yards in a season (3,589) and career (7,844).
“He’s a great running back,’’ said Morgantown senior linebacker Maxwell Anderson. “He’s strong and you really can’t get good shots on him. He’s not the biggest guy in the world, but he’s fast and he’ll beat you to the sideline. We had trouble with him early — he kept running around us. But I thought we contained him for most of the second half.’’
Others to top 200 yards at the Super Six were Weir senior Josh Smith, who ran for 215 yards in the Red Riders’ 40-0 Class AA win over Bluefield on Friday and Wheeling Central junior Brandon Tucker, who gained 201 yards in the Maroon Knights’ 35-20 Class A win against Williamstown Saturday night.
All three were selected as their team’s most valuable player in a media vote. Three others also hit the 100-yard mark over the weekend:
· Morgantown’s Anderson ran 27 times for 151 yards;
· Williamstown senior tailback Tyler Lowers carried 23 times for 137 yards;
· Weir senior tailback Corey Lyons had 16 attempts for 101 yards.
Five of the six game MVPs were running backs and 14 of the 20 touchdowns scored at the Super Six came on running plays.
All three of the state’s defending champions were on hand at Wheeling Island Stadium, and two successfully defended their titles — Morgantown in AAA and Central in A. Bluefield fell in the AA finals.
Two unbeaten and top-ranked teams also made it to Wheeling, with Morgantown winning and Williamstown losing. The Mohigans extended their two-year win streak to 28.
“These teams are the best in the state,’’ Anderson said of the AAA finals pairing. “The way the playoffs are set up, it’s for the two best teams in the state to meet up. Today that held true.’’
Looking ahead
The Super Six contract is up again and cities interested in playing host to the event must submit their bids to the SSAC by Dec. 16. Presentations are scheduled for next month in Parkersburg.
Wheeling, which has had the games for the last dozen years, again expects to make a strong bid, with Charleston seen as its chief rival. Other cities expressing interest in the past are Huntington, Morgantown, Parkersburg and Bluefield.
Charleston, with multi-million dollar improvements to Laidley Field/University of Charleston Stadium, most notably field turf and new dressing rooms, appeared to push Wheeling for the most recent two-year contract. Both cities are expected to pull out all the stops this time around.
“Every time it comes up for a bid, we look at what extra we can do for the kids,’’ said Bernie Dolan, athletic director at Wheeling Park High School and co-director of Wheeling’s Super Six committee.
“That’s our focus every time and will continue to be our focus. I don’t know if we’ve decided on any new wrinkles or not, but if we do, it’ll be for the kids.’’
Sentiment seemed to build for possible rotation of the games among the cities approved to hold them, but Dolan doesn’t necessarily go for that idea.
“It’s possible,’’ he said, “but as I tell people all the time, we go to Charleston for basketball, baseball, cheering, volleyball and track [championships], so if we’re talking about rotating football, we ought to talk about rotating everything.
“I haven’t talked to [school officials from around the state] lately about rotating. It seems everybody wants to win on their own merits, like every other state competition. It’s the same thing in every other sport. I think they’re looking out for the kids.’’
Central theme
Williamstown may have let a window of opportunity slip by in its Class A finals loss to Central.
The Yellow Jackets (13-1) will carry a 46-game regular-season winning streak into 2006 but still have no titles to show for their efforts.
Even worse, they lose 11 seniors, including perhaps their top two players (Lowers and fullback-linebacker Michael Goertler), while Central sported few senior starters.
“Any time you get here, you feel fortunate and you’ve got to take advantage of it,’’ said Williamstown coach Terry Smith. “You don’t know how many times we’ll be back. You’d like to say you’ll be here enough, but these guys [at Central] are here all the time.’’
Central (10-4) has won four of the last six Class A titles. With the recent demise of Moorefield’s once-dominant program, the Maroon Knights appear to have clear sailing for the immediate future.
Of the eight skill players who touched the ball for Central in the title game, seven are underclassmen, including Tucker, who scored a Class A title-game record four touchdowns.
Quarterback Alex Peluchette and running back Chris Martin, who returned a kickoff 89 yards for a TD and another record, are sophomores and leading tackler Daniel Gordon, a younger brother of former all-stater John Gordon, is a mere freshman. Peluchette also had two interceptions.
“We’ve got 40 guys on our roster and they’ve got 70,’’ Smith said. “It’s hard to compete with that every year and every year. They had 19 seniors graduate last year, and now they’re back. If we get one [key] guy banged up, you can’t make it this far. We didn’t get it done, and who knows when we’ll be back.
“But no excuses. You’ve got to take advantage when you get a chance. How we’re gonna do that, I’m not sure. We’ll go back to the drawing board and maybe run a little harder, lift a little harder. I don’t know if I have an answer.’’
Williamstown thinks so much of its defense that it’s the lineup that gets introduced before the game. The Jackets had allowed just four TDs in their last six games and no more than 24 points to anyone this season — until they ran into Central.
If the rest of Class A didn’t catch up with the youthful Maroon Knights this year, it may take a while to dismantle a budding dynasty. They lost four games and barely made the postseason as a No. 15 seed, winning three road playoff games to make it to the finals.
“The kids matured,’’ said first-year coach Mike Young. “We started a new season and the youth wasn’t there, maturity was. We didn’t go into a shell and didn’t let up. I’m so proud of what these kids did. They just got better and ran harder and blocked harder.’’
In a touching moment, one of the first people to hug Young on the field after Central’s win was Paula Thomas, widow of former Knights veteran coach Jim Thomas, who died of a heart attack in March. The team wore decals with the initials “JT’’ on its helmets.
Going deep
Nitro attempted just nine passes against Morgantown, its lowest total since trying eight in its only other loss, that coming Oct. 7 at Hurricane.
Chris Fulmer, the national leader in career receptions, added just three to his total for 31 yards. Michael Scott went 5-of-9 for 51 yards, with almost all his attempts being short shots in the flats.
“They were staying back with a lot of cushion,’’ Nitro coach Scott Tinsley said of the Morgantown secondary.
“I messed up one drive early when it was second-and-3 and I tried to go deep to [Fulmer] and they had it covered up. We had another intentional grounding call that really screwed up a series for us, so I just wanted to be patient, move the chains and see if we couldn’t get it into the end zone.’’
Tinsley said he hadn’t given much thought about what next year’s offense would be like without Culbertson, or if Nitro would revert back to its former pass-happy ways with two more years of Scott under center.
“I guess we’ll probably have to,’’ Tinsley said, “but it’s kind of hard for me to think about next year when I’m still reeling from losing Josh, Jon [Culbertson], Chris [Fulmer], Ross [Martin] and all those guys.’’
Quick kicks
· Morgantown played almost a perfect game. Only one of its 61 plays went for minus yards (a sack by Nitro’s Shane Skeens), it was penalized just once for 5 yards and its only turnover was the interception Josh Culbertson returned 68 yards for a TD.
· Williamstown’s only penalty came with 1:30 left when Central induced the Jackets to jump offside on fourth-and-1, allowing the Knights to run out the remaining time.
To contact assistant sports editor Rick Ryan, use e-mail or call 348-5175.
