Wildcats Dominate Wolves 48-13 to Claim Lower State Championship

By Lonnie Turner

Some people always want to know why Coach Jackie Hayes likes to leave early for a football game in a distant town. Well, the answer came last Friday evening when the buses pulled out from the DHS parking lot at 3:30 and headed down I-95 on a trip to St. Stephen, which is about 110 miles and through the country when you turn off the interstate.

The bus holding the defensive team developed an oil leak near the 146 mile marker and was abandoned on the side of the busy interstate at the 135 mile marker as the team boarded the offensive team’s bus for the final leg of the trip.

A bad omen, you ask? Not so for the Wildcats as they completely dominated the Timberland Wolves, 48-13, in front of a huge Dillon following and an equally huge crowd of the home folks of St. Stephen.

It took the Wolves only five plays after taking the opening kickoff to score first with Shrine Bowl bound Austin McKinney putting the finishing touch on a 45-yard drive with an 11-yard run with only two minutes gone off the stadium clock. But back roared the Wildcats to tie the game behind the running of junior tailback Anthony Blue, who rushed for his first of three touchdowns on a 9-yard run with eight minutes remaining in the first quarter. From there, the Wildcats ran off 41 unanswered points to take a 48-7 lead into the final three minutes of the game. McKinney scored the other Timberland touchdown when he caught a pass from Mike Gabel and outran the Dillon defense for a 79-yard score.

Pete Ingram put the Wildcats up 14-0 when he fielded a punt at his own 14-yard line and raced down the Dillon sideline for an 86-yard touchdown with two minutes left in the first quarter.

In the second quarter, Anthony Blue was on the receiving end of two 16-yard touchdown passes from freshman quarterback Avery McCall, who completed 16 of 23 passes on the night for a season’s best 263 yards. The young signal caller, who stepped in when starter Thomas Grossetti was injured prior to the final regular season game with Waccamaw, has a 71% completion rate (63 of 89) and has thrown for 998 yards and eight touchdowns. McCall also completed a 24-yard touchdown pass to Breon Page and rushed for another.

At the half, the Wildcats enjoyed a 27-7 lead and after taking the opening kickoff of the second half, drove 75 yards on eight plays for a 34-7 lead.

Joe Blue, who is described as a major back-up by one of the Dillon coaches, not only made his presence known as a linebacker, but rushed eight times for 60 yards, including a 33-yard touchdown with three and a half minutes left in the game.

In addition to McCall’s 263 yards, Anthony Blue led in the rushing department with 111 yards on 21 carries to run his total to 1,568 for the season with 26 touchdowns.

“When you have over 400 yards on offense, there’s no way we should lose the game,” explained Coach Hayes. “It was a great team effort.”

The Cats rushed for 185 yards to go along with McCall’s 263 to give them 473 for the game and 161 yards in returns put the total over 630 yards.

Leading the tackle sheet in the game was Sam McLean with a season’s high of 10 solo tackles and Jalen Washington intercepted a pass for the 18th of the season for the team.

With the win over Timberland, the fourth out of 10 meetings with the Wolves, Dillon will play a 5:30 game with an old playoff foe, the Fairfield Central Griffins, at Benedict College in Columbia on Friday. According to Coach Hayes, the buses will pull out from the high school at 1:30 if fans would like to follow in a convoy to the game. The Wildcats defeated the Griffins 21-0 in 1989 at Dillon and have since lost three straight.

Hope to see a huge convoy leaving the high school on Friday!

Photos by Wallace Moody. Click images below to view at full size!