Storm valiant in defeat

Sunday, September 07, 2008

The Hopkins County Central football team made a valiant attempt on Friday night to secure the school’s first win over Madisonville-North Hopkins in four years, but in the end Storm injuries may have prevented the team from closing the door in the 13-6 overtime loss.

Central’s season-opener on Aug. 30, a 63-0 win over Fulton County, was decided rather early, which meant many regulars didn’t play the entire game, but Storm coach Rick Snodgrass wasn’t quick to say last week’s game was a factor.

“We ran them pretty hard this last week in practice,” I don’t know, maybe we burnt them out last week. We didn’t get a chance to get into the fourth quarter last week. It’s one of those things that it’s hard to say what it was.”

Ultimately, the injuries influenced Snodgrass’ decision to send kicker Wesley Ipock to attempt a 20-yard field goal with 50 seconds remaining in regulation.

North (2-0) committed a couple offsides penalties to inch Central (1-1) closer, but Snodgrass still opted for the higher percentage play.

“If we were healthier we might have went for seven,” Snodgrass said, “but in that situation we just wanted to punch it in and take the lead.

“We had some kids on the sidelines for one reason or another. We had a couple kids cramping up, we had a couple kids that were knicked up so we were a little bit shorthanded there and we weren’t able to get the ball in the endzone.”

The field goal was Ipock’s second of the day. Ipock, who also runs cross county and plays soccer at Central, converted on his first career field goal late in the third quarter to tie the game at 3-3 from 34 yards out.

“Wesley did a good job,” Snodgrass said of the senior. “He really stepped up in really a pressure situation, an atmosphere he’s probably never been in and he knocked down two field goals.”

The final minute proved to be a series of emotional and momentum swings for both teams as North rebounded after the go-ahead Ipock kick.

After the kickoff, a personal foul penalty on Central allowed North to advance even closer to the Storm half of the field.

Setting up North’s game-tying field goal was a dramatic play between the Maroons’ Ryan Robinson and Storm defender Nikee Caldwell as the pair battled for a tipped pass.

“We were in position on that play and it was just kind of bad luck for us,” Snodgrass said. “It was tipped up and Nikee Caldwell went up and made a good play on the ball and almost picked it off. It just kind of tipped up and landed in another kid’s hands.”

Snodgrass said the batted ball wasn’t the only Central misfortune on the play.

“The back judge blew the whistle, but I guess it was so loud that evidently he didn’t acknowledge the inadvertent whistle, and the ball landed in the other kid’s hands. It was just a bad break really.”

Although Central ultimately lost, the Storm defense played well and limited the Maroons to just 13 points after North put 37 on Caldwell County in last week’s Browning Bowl game.

Because both teams have comparable athletes and formations, Snodgrass said his defense was not confused or overmatched.

“We’re so similar in what we do that our kids kind of see it in practice every day, and I think that made it a little easier for our defense to get a read on things,” he said. “We were able to apply a lot of pressure and apply some man coverage, really throttle them down.”

While the Central defense stalled the North running attack, the Storm rushers fell off in production from their season-opener.

Quarterback Jake Powell led Central with 57 yards rushing on 17 carries, but it took five others and 21 attempts to combine for the team’s other 57 running yards.

“We really thought we could run the football better than what we did, but with some kids getting knicked up and going down, it really limited us in what we could do,” Snodgrass said.

The passing game found even less success as Powell completed just four of his 14 pass attempts for 22 yards. He was also intercepted once.

After a day of collecting thoughts about the game, Snodgrass summed up the offensive struggles and tossed around ideas he could have tried to overcome them.

“We never could get rhythm going,” he said. “We never got into any kind of flow of the game.

“In hindsight we should have went back and maybe tried to throw the ball a little bit more.”

Central heads back to practice Monday to prepare for its next game 7:30 p.m. Friday when the Storm visit Trigg County (0-2).