Coach Smith couldn't have said it better
Monday, November 28, 2005
By DAVID POE - The Parkersburg News & The Parkersburg Sentinel

WILLIAMSTOWN -Williamstown football coach Terry Smith perfectly summed up his team's 17-0 Class A semifinal win over St. Marys in one sentence.

"We played great defense and did what we had to do on offense,'' Smith said following Friday's game.

Indeed, Williamstown's defense was dominating. Yes, it allowed St. Marys to gain some rushing yards in the first half, but at the same time it was preventing the big-play Blue Devils from making a big play.

The halftime score stood 0-0. That's because Williamstown hadn't yet done what it had to do on offense -get the ball into the hands of senior running back Tyler Lowers.

With St. Marys flooding the box in order to stop the run, Lowers touched the ball just 10 times in the first 24 minutes. The Yellowjackets had gotten away from their bread and butter.

But that quickly changed on the first drive of the second half. Williamstown took over at its own 32 and for six straight plays, it gave the ball to Lowers. On a crucial third and five from the Yellowjacket 47, he took a pitch from quarterback Brandon Roberts and bulled his way just past the first down marker.

Two plays later, from the St. Marys 44, he broke around right end and sped into the end zone for the game's first score and the only one Williamstown would need. It was a six-play, 68-yard, all-Lowers TD drive.

Finally, one team had the momentum in this game. And once momentum had its feet firmly planted on Williamstown's sideline, the Yellowjackets made sure it never left.

St. Marys didn't get a single first down in the third quarter. Meanwhile, Williamstown took advantage of a Ryan Flowers interception and scored its second touchdown on a screen pass from quarterback Brandon Roberts to Brad Anderson with 2:08 to play in the third quarter. It was 14-0 Yellowjackets and once could sense this game was over.

In most athletic contests, the team with the best individual athlete usually wins. Lowers -who accounted for 170 rushing yards -clearly was the best athlete on this cold Friday night.

In a game where somebody was going to have to step up, Lowers put Williamstown's fate on his broad shoulders and carried the Yellowjackets to their second state title game appearance in three years.

· How cold was it on the sidelines? I took five pens to the game and only one of them would work. The most popular places to stand were around the two portable heaters on each sideline.

· With all the controversy surrounding the game site, one would have thought the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission would be well represented at the game.

But it wasn't represented at all.

The SSAC has an executive director and three assistants. There were three Friday night football playoff games and no other sports events in the state. Yet the SSAC didn't bother showing up to see how the game was administrated, how the ticket compromise worked out and how the crowd behaved. (The answer in all three cases is good.)

As announcer Steve Daugherty -who did bother showing up -would say, "Unbelievable.''

Contact Dave Poe via e-mail at dpoe@newsandsentinel.com.