ABERDEEN — Numbers took the forefront here last Friday, as the Aberdeen High School football team clinched the Class 3A, Region 2 championship.
Held scoreless by Water Valley in the first and third quarters, Aberdeen scored 12 points in the second quarter and added eight more in the fourth quarter for a 20-13 victory.
“We made it hard on ourselves, but we did what we had to do,” Aberdeen coach Mark Bray said. “We didn’t play all that well, but they (Water Valley) had a lot to do with that.”
Down 7-0 after Brandon Bounds’ 33-yard touchdown and an extra point on Water Valley’s second possession of the game gave the visitors an early advantage, Aberdeen scored twice in the second quarter to take a 12-7 halftime lead.
Quarterback Josh Williams hooked up with Aaron McMillian on a 70-yard touchdown strike to make it 7-6. Justin Lucas then gave the Bulldogs a 12-7 lead on a 6-yard run with under a minute left in the half.
After a scoreless third quarter, Bounds’ 5-yard burst early in the fourth period gave the Blue Devils a 13-12 edge, but a fourth-down 26-yard touchdown pass from Williams to Sammie Burroughs and a two-point pass to Trey Mims proved to be the game-winner for the Bulldogs.
Williams finished with a 7-for-14 effort good for 136 yards and two touchdown. He also rushed 17 times for 74 yards. McMillian’s lone catch covering 70 yards led the receiving corps in yards gained, while Burroughs had five catches for 63 yards.
“Aaron’s our deep threat. No doubt,” Bray said.
Chico Harrison had 20 carries for 120 yards on 20 carries to pace the rushing attack.
Burroughs and McMillian also contributed two key interceptions. Burroughs’ was inside the Aberdeen 30 in the first quarter, while McMillian’s interception came in Aberdeen’s end zone with less than a minute to play.
Lucas had 14 solo tackles and two assists and Mims was credited with 11 stops — eight of which were unassisted.
Zay Forshee just missed double digits with two assists and seven solos, six of which were for a loss and one quarterback sack, while Tyre Carothers had six tackles and two assists.
Aberdeen (8-2, 4-0) will wind up the regular season at 7 tonight in Randolph against South Pontotoc (1-9, 0-4). It will play host to the Winona-Marks Palmer winner in the first round of the Class 3A playoffs.
“We’re just trying to stay focused, get some folks who are bruised and banged up healthy, and maybe we can develop some depth by playing a lot of people Friday,” Bray said.
Hamilton
n Softball team wins Class 2A state title: Saddled with an uncharacteristic 4-5 record on Aug. 25, Hamilton softball coach Lewis Earnest figured he was in for a long year.
Twenty-three consecutive wins later, Earnest had captured his third state slow-pitch softball title, as the Lady Lions swept two games from South State champ Enterprise-Clarke on Saturday in Ridgeland.
“When we were 4-5, I thought to myself that at this rate it was going to be a long year,” Earnest said. “We only lost two seniors from last year’s team, so I thought we had a chance to be pretty good. But when we were a game under .500 nine games into the season, I really got concerned about the direction we were heading.”
But time flies when you are having fun and how much more fun could a team ask for than to win its next 23 games and cap the season with a state championship.
A change in emphasis did the trick for Hamilton. The switch defied conventional coaching logic.
“Going into the season, I thought we would be pretty good defensively,” Earnest said, “and despite the poor record we were doing a good job on defense. Since slow-pitch softball is a hitting game, I decided to focus all of our practice time on hitting, and we were probably the only team in the state that didn’t have a coach hitting ground balls and fly balls in practice. Instead, we just hit and hit and hit.”
Earnest, who also has three state baseball titles to his credit, said he broke a couple of old bats out of storage, bought some brand new Champ Pro softballs, put a screen 10-15 feet in front of the plate and used all his practice time hitting the ball.
“The Champ Pro balls are what you might call pretty hot balls,” Earnest said, “so I told the girls to go up to the plate, rare back, and just swing as hard as they could. I told them not to think about whether the pitch was a strike or not and to quit trying to place the ball and all of a sudden we started hitting 40-50 balls out of the park every day in practice.”
As the balls started sailing over the fence, the Lady Lions’ confidence level rose, as did their record.
“We took the thinking element out of the game, and you could see how much more confident they were at the plate,” Earnest said. “Once their confidence improved, they thought they could hit with anybody and we started hitting the ball a lot farther than we had been.”
With its new-found confidence at the plate, Hamilton rode the long ball en route to a 25-5 record going into the state finals. Nine of the 10 regular starters had at least one home run as the Lady Lions bashed 38, including nine in a doubleheader sweep of New Site.
Hamilton didn’t hit a single ball out of the park and committed 10 errors in the state championship series, but the Lady Lions had 30 hits in the 13-7 and 9-5 wins against Enterprise-Clarke.
Eighteen of those hits came in Game 1, as seven of the 10 starters had two or more hits, and all but one starter hit safely.
Two singles, a pair of doubles and a Hamilton error gave Enterprise a 3-0 lead in the top half of the first, but Hamilton countered with a single run in the bottom half of the inning and then scored five in the second, three in the fourth and four in the sixth in the 13-7 win.
Addie Thompson and Cheyenne Logan had three hits each to pace Hamilton. Thompson had two doubles and a single, while Logan had two singles and a double. Thompson also had three RBIs.
Taylor Hyland, Alison Atkins, Mary Willis, Christy Willis, and Hallie Dobbs all had two hits, one of which was a double for Atkins and the Willis duo. Singles by Raimi Bryan and Jordyn Jackson rounded out the 18-hit attack.
Hyland also drove in four runs to claim RBI honors, while Atkins, Logan, Bryan, and Christy Willis all scored twice.
Thompson (eight) and Christy Willis (six) combined for 14 of Hamilton’s 21 putouts, while Hyland (six) and Atkins (five) accounted for 11 of the Lady Lions’ 17 assists.
In the clinching game, an explosive second inning did the trick to give Earnest his first state championship since 2009. Thirteen batters went to the plate in the fateful frame, as the Lady Lions combined eight of their dozen safeties with three errors to score nine runs, five of which were unearned.
Once again, virtually the entire lineup contributed to the 9-5 victory, as nine of the 10 starters hit safely at least once.
Christy Willis, Hyland, and Thompson each had two hits in a 12-hit attack. Willis had the game’s only triple, and Hyland had the Lady Lions’ lone double.
Also hitting safely were Mary Willis, Myiah Dobbs, Atkins, Logan, Jackson, and Bryan — all of whom singled.
Hyland (two), Hallie Dobbs (one), and Bryan (one) were credited with Hamilton’s only four RBIs.
Atkins, who also was the pitcher of record in the first game, gave up six hits and only one earned run to finish 27-5.
Hamilton turned three double plays in the second game, as Christy Willis (five), Thompson (four), and Bryan (four) had 13 of Hamilton’s 21 putouts. Thompson and Hyland each had four assists.
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