Haughton and Parkway High Schools have plenty in common – Sligo Road, a school district border and both have red as the dominant color – but they also share something else.
A heartbeat that lives with both head coaches.
Before Thursday’s game started, Haughton coach Matthew Sewell couldn’t help but reminisce on being at Preston Crownover Stadium once again. “Something about it …” the Bucs coach said.
He’s a graduate of Haughton and began his coaching career there, but it was at Parkway where things began to happen. It happened because of Parkway coach Coy Brotherton, another Haughton graduate, who brought Sewell over to the Panthers when he became their head coach.
These two share Haughton High and they also share Parkway High.
“It’s a game I grew up watching,” Sewell said. “I have great memories being involved in this game as a kid growing up and as a coach on both sides.”
This one won’t go down a great memory for Sewell and the Bucs (1-2, 1-1) as Parkway (3-0, 1-0) rolled to a 66-21 win in a District 1-5A matchup.
It’s easy to make enemies in the high school coaching ranks. A lot of feelings get displayed on coaches’ sleeves on Friday nights. Some coaches you can tolerate, others not so much.
But this is different.
“We hang out together,” Brotherton said. “We talk every day and are close friends. But in this situation, you have to do what you have to do for your team.”
When Brotherton’s older brother Jason was coaching Haughton, Coy would always insist it was his least favorite game to play. Once Jason retired, playing Haughton is still Brotherton’s least favorite game.
“I try not to think about coaching against him, but I do,” Brotherton said. “It’s tough to see them try to make plays and not be able to. But I’d rather play against anybody else and day of the week. I wish we never played them.”
“It’s fun coaching against him,” Sewell said. “But sometimes it’s not. We want them to do good and they want us to do good. But only one of us can win.”
Wednesday night — 24 hours before their teams did battle – they had dinner together. They take vacations together. If they go a few days without talking to each other, there’s probably going to be a call to the authorities for a welfare check.
When Haughton scored on a 68-yard pass to Brandon Craig on the third play of the game, it gave the Bucs a quick ray of hope.
For 93 seconds.
Parkway scored and scored and scored and scored — and then the second quarter stated. Not only did the Panthers score touchdowns,
they pretty much exhausted their two-point play repertoire in the process, going three-for-three to start the game.
The Panthers even scored on defense when linebacker Mark Copenhaver lived up to his jersey number with a 31-yard pick-6 to end the first quarter and a 38-7 Parkway lead.
To the Bucs’ credit, they didn’t lay down so that they could get home in time to study for a Friday Algebra II test. While staring a potential running clock situation in the second half, Haughton got a score on a 12-yard pass from Taylor Weathersby to Ethan Johnson with two seconds remaining before halftime to score its 21st point.
That’s a nice half, until you consider that Parkway already had 52 points.
The running clock did eventually make an appearance with 5:26 left in their third quarter, otherwise the game might still be going on. At that point, it basically became a JV game.
“They are a really good team and they looked awesome tonight,” Sewell said. “But we’ve got some guys with some fight and weren’t going to lay down.”
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com