By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
It’s been a complicated week for the Parkway Panthers.
There was a search for a starting quarterback after the two-year starter was injured last week. That search ended – where else? – by finding a lacrosse player in the middle of the week.
Then there was the matter of several players, many of them starters, being removed from the team following an off-the-field incident.
Another complicating factor was this week’s opponent, the Byrd Yellow Jackets, who had exactly the same amount of losses as Parkway did coming into the game – zero.
So when things got complicated Thursday night at Preston Crownover Stadium, the Panthers did the most decidedly uncomplicated thing: Give the ball to C.J. Dudley.
Again.
And again.
And they kept doing it until the horn sounded on the Panthers’ 46-35 win. “That was my favorite moment of the game,” Dudley said.
The senior running back had more carries in the game (39) than he had in the previous four games combined. He also ran for 210 yards and four touchdowns. “Every time you hit him, he’d still gain four or five yards,” Byrd coach Stacy Ballew said.
Go ahead and assume that Dudley slept well Thursday night. But the same probably can’t be said for Parkway coach Coy Brotherton, who had an idea that, because of how the week had gone, Dudley might be getting more than his share of the workload.
“I told him during the week that whatever you do, don’t call Child Protection Services on me on Friday,” Brotherton said.
“Everybody stepped up tonight,” Dudley said. “Byrd did an awesome job too, so we had to keep going and do our job.”
There were plenty of jobs being done and done well by both teams, but surprisingly it was Byrd that had the big play offense (11.6 yards per play) and Parkway with the ball control (the Panthers ran 76 plays to Byrd’s 33).
“I’m probably not going to sleep, because all I will remember is big play after big play,” Brotherton said.
He’d be better off counting sheep, because the big plays seemed to never stop coming. As impressive as Dudley was for the Panthers by constantly picking up key first downs – “we just couldn’t get them off the field,” Ballew said – the Panther senior might not have even been the most impressive running back on the field.
Dudley averaged 5.4 yards per carry; Byrd’s Christian Maxie averaged 30 yards per carry more than that. The sophomore scored three touchdowns – the shortest was 51 yards – and had 291 yards rushing. Just his three touchdown runs alone accounted for 200 yards.
The game started as if the Yellow Jackets were going to get run out of the stadium as the Panther defensive line blew up the first six Byrd plays. That, and two big punt returns by Mark Copenhaver, led to two Dudley touchdown runs and it was 14-0 by the time the parking lot got full.
But on the first play after that, Maxie took a pitch from quarterback Harrison Ayers was went 76 yards for a touchdown, signaling that the Yellow Jackets weren’t going anywhere.
As impressive as he was, the Parkway offense was a lot more than just Dudley. Senior Gavin Ferrington, who was probably planning on watching this game from the student section before he was invited onto the team mid-week, completed an amazing 12 of 13 passes for 140 yards and two touchdowns.
“It’s a special moment for these kids, especially for Gavin,” Brotherton said. “Those kids and assistant coaches rallied around him.”
In the end, though, it was two fumble recoveries Chase Crowder and Nate Kemp (both deep in Parkway territory) in the last six minutes of the game that sealed the game and moved the Panthers to 5-0.
“That was one of those games that you feel like you just ran out of time,” Ballew said. “The kids played extremely hard and we were in it the whole way. I was proud of how we hung in there against them. They are a good team.”
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com
SCORING SUMMARY
P – C.J. Dudley 26 run (run failed)
P – Dudley 5 run (Dudley run)
B – Christian Maxie 76 run (Asher Murray kick)
P – Gary Burney 24 pass from Gavin Ferrington (kick failed)
B – Maxie 73 run (Murray kick)
P – Carmaro Mayo 4 run (run failed)
P – Dudley 4 run (Shawn Jackson kick)
B – Maxie 51 run (Murray kick)
P – Mayo 19 pass from Ferrington (Jackson kick)
B – Harrison Ayres 19 run (Murray kick)
B – Quinton Hilliard 26 run (Murray kick)
P – Dudley 9 run (run failed)
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING: Byrd, Maxie 8-291-3 TD, Desmond Simmons 8-40, Hilliard 6-35-1 TD, Ayres 10-11. Parkway, Dudley 39-210-4 TD, Mayo 15-78-1 TD, Team 4-minus-9, Ferrington 1-minus-18.
PASSING: Byrd, none. Parkway, Ferrington 12-13-0-140-2TD.
RECEIVING: Byrd, none. Parkway, Mayo 8-91-1 TD, Burney 2-29, Josh Coleman 2-20.