The Marion County Football Championship trophy has found a new home on the West side of the mighty Pearl River and the Columbia Wildcats are undefeated no longer. The West Marion Trojans outlasted the Wildcats 7-6 in overtime Friday to claim their seventh county title in 10 years, bringing it back to Foxworth after it spent the past two years at Columbia.
“To get the county championship, that means so much,” West Marion head coach Brad Duncan said. “That group of seniors, we talked about it all week how they wanted to bring it back over here, and now we got it back.”
“I love it,” Jartavious “Tater Rabbit” Martin said. “The county championship is always big; it’s just about as big as the state championship around here.”
Martin added that Duncan always tells them that they might forget homecoming and senior night, but they’ll never forget being the county champs and it’s something they will be able to carry with them the rest of their lives.
The Trojans (5-2, 2-1) got the first crack at it in OT from the Columbia 10, and Martin sniffed out the end zone from three yards out on third-and-goal for the first score of the game. With the biggest kick of his life, Qavonte Swanigan drilled the PAT to give West Marion the 7-0 advantage.
The Wildcats (6-1, 2-1) nearly gave their fans a collective heart attack getting it to the 6-inch yard line for fourth-and-goal, but Greg Fortenberry plowed his way into the end zone to make it 7-6. Columbia tried to tie it to send it to a second overtime with the PAT, but Garrett Helman’s kick fell short as the West Marion players and fans soaked in the victory.
“It feels great,” Swanigan said postgame. “Getting it back after (Columbia) got it two years in a row, it feels awesome. We’re going out with a bang.”
Swanigan said as he lined up to kick the extra point all sorts of things were running through his mind, but his teammates having faith in him gave him the confidence to put it through the uprights.
Columbia head coach Chip Bilderback said in hindsight he thinks he should’ve tried to win it right there by going for two on the road in a hostile environment but that he and the Wildcats still have all the faith in the world in Helman.
Midway through the second quarter, Columbia was first to reach the opposition’s territory with a Josh Brown punt return setting the Wildcats up at the West Marion 43. But a bad snap on first down lost the Wildcats 10 yards, and they were forced to punt.
With a reverse pass from Swanigan to Larry Magee that went for 38 yards getting the Trojans down to the Columbia 5, West Marion had a golden opportunity to score before halftime. They would get down to the CHS 2 on the next play, but a 12 men on the field brought back a Martin touchdown. On fourth-and-goal on the final play of the half, the Trojans tried another reverse pass with Swanigan, but he had nowhere to go with the ball and was brought down at the line of scrimmage.
Columbia actually had negative-2 yards in the first half, while the Trojans had 112. Yet the game remained scoreless.
After a Columbia punt to open the second half, West Marion got into the red zone again but turned it over on downs.
The Wildcats didn’t pick up their first first down until late in the third quarter, but that drive was immediately halted by a fumbled handoff that lost them nine yards and Carter Smith being sacked by Octavious Harvey on third down. They had to punt from their own 10, which set the Trojans up with another golden opportunity with the ball at the Columbia 30.
But after a holding call back the Trojans up into a third-and-13, Jayden Duncan was picked by Dashod Ball on a deep ball in the end zone. Columbia picked up its second first down of the game, but then Smith was sacked on third down again, this time by Cooper Foxworth, to force a punt as the game entered the fourth quarter.
In the fourth quarter, the Wildcats finally had some momentum and were driving the ball, but Swanigan made a leaping interception of Smith to end the threat. Columbia started its next drive just inside West Marion territory, but on third-and-11 Octavious Harvey made a great open field tackle on 245-pound power back Greg Fortenberry on a screen to force a punt. Harvey finished the game with 12 tackles, three tackles for loss and two sacks.
After getting the ball back with just 1:23 left in regulation and getting a new set of downs thanks to a running into the punter penalty, Duncan opted to kneel out the last 16 seconds rather than hope for an 82-yard miracle. Duncan said he could hear fans in the stands at the end of the game going crazy, thinking the Trojans should’ve tried to score, but he said he knew it would likely be a disaster with Columbia having everyone deep and being so far back on their own side of the field.
Then in overtime, the Trojans got it done and finally got into the end zone to win the game.
“We got down there so many times, and finally we got it in,” Duncan said.
The veteran coach, who is in his last year with the Trojans, said they knew it was going to be a battle, but their resiliency is what secured the victory.
“(The resiliency) was amazing,” he said. “After not showing up with very much fire last week, to come out and play a really good football team to a 0-0 tie in regulation, I’m just so proud of them. Then who would’ve thought we would kick a (dang) PAT to win the thing? Q has worked really hard this week on it. Wednesday he kicked 10 in a row so I said, ‘We’re going to do it. We’re going to believe in it.’”
The Trojans stymied the usually elite Columbia offense and held it to just four first downs and 23 total yards in regulation. Forty-two of those yards came on 12 Omar Johnson carries while the Wildcats lost 30 yards on snaps, fumbled handoffs and sacks. Duncan said the Trojans defense may be little, but the players fly around and play with so much heart passion.
“It was tough battle; that’s for sure,” Bilderback said.
Bilderback said the Wildcats had a great week of preparation, and any time you lose a game by one point in overtime you reevaluate everything that happened because any one thing could’ve been the difference between winning and losing that you’d like to have back to do differently.
“It’s what you expect when you play your rival on the road. You expect a four-quarter war, and sometimes you end up on the short end of the stick. We’ve got to regroup,” he said. “That loss is not going to define the Columbia Wildcats. What’s going to define the Columbia Wildcats is how we respond from that loss.”
One of the biggest things that hurt Columbia’s offense was early-down penalties that put them in long down-and-distances and forced them to throw on third down rather than sticking with the running game. Bilderback said it was simply a lack of execution that kept the Wildcats from getting into the flow of the game.
“It’s hard for any offense to be continually behind the chains,” he said. “First down was a killer for us. I think we had four first down (plays) that were more than first-and-10, and any offense struggles overcoming that. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the NFL, college or in high school. When you get first-and-15s, it’s hard to convert those. Something we’ve got to improve on is attention to detail.”
Next up for the Trojans is Tylertown (1-5, 0-3) at home next Friday.
“They’re struggling, but Tylertown is going to be Tylertown. They’re going to have athletes everywhere that can run,” Duncan said.
Meanwhile, the Wildcats will go on the road to take on Seminary (2-4, 1-2). Bilderback said the Wildcats need to focus on playing Columbia football more so than worrying about Seminary.
“I definitely think after going through that our team is very, very motivated to finish out the year the right way. We’ve got a lot of battles ahead,” he said.
