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TJCA Football Will Not Go Undefeated, Conference Play Begins

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This coming Friday, conference play begins for the South Mountain Athletic football teams, but first up is Gryphons football.

Unfortunately, Thomas Jefferson doesn’t play as well as they are capable of doing and end up falling for the first time all year in a 34-13 loss in the home opener to Avery (2-1). 

Avery won the field position battle all night with great punts by Tre Jackson and forced Thomas Jefferson to go the length of the field on offense. The Gryphons were down at the end of the third, 27-13, but cut it to 20-13 on Coty Flynn’s run to pay dirt. However, a big run led to one touchdown and another short field in back-to-back possessions allowed the Vikings to pull away.

All in all, it was good game for Trey McGhee who led the defense with 10 tackles on the night and a sack. Efrim Borders led the way in receiving with 89 yards and has 246 on the year.

Following the game, the ole’ ball coach talked about what went wrong in the effort.

“Bottom line, we got whipped up front and defensively didn’t tackle well,” Thomas Jefferson Football Coach Jerry Cash said. Although, we got behind early, we had a chance to come back, but gave up two cheap touchdowns at the end. It‘s disappointing that we didn‘t play to our potential tonight.”

Thomas Jefferson (2-1) has the upcoming week off, but will host Asheville School on the 13th. 

The only team left undefeated in Rutherford County is Chase. The Rutherford County version of the Trojans whipped the Trojans from Catawba County in a 38-13 blowout. Thanks to 204 yards rushing by Josh Wright and three interceptions from Jordan O’Rourke, Chase has taken care of two tests.

They have a mighty task ahead of them as they welcome Burns (3-0) to town for a 7:30pm kickoff, which is also my game of the week. Burns have double trouble themselves in Chris Montgomery (QB) and Tylan Ruff (RB), but it’s a defense that allowed just six points this past weekend to Freedom.

The Trojans are going to have to play exceptional on both sides of the ball if they expect to get to 3-0 this weekend as I expect this one to be a challenging, yet entertaining one.

Well, R-S Central (1-2) rebounded in a big way as Polk County couldn’t stop them in a 42-33 shootout victory for the Hilltoppers. Desmond Whiteside scored three times and Matt Atchely once as they both rushed for over 100 yards in the victory.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t get any easier as they open the new 2A/3A SMAC league with a visit from Shelby (1-2) this Friday. Pass-happy Shelby will see R.J. George airing it out as he passed for a school record last week against South Point.

On the Central defense, Trey Clark has shown his ability to provide some big hits and Kaleb Hines will have to play well to compete with the Golden Lions.

Call it bad luck, but East Rutherford could be 2-1 instead of 0-3. They were bitten by the two-point conversion for the second week in a row as they fell 22-21 at Tuscola. 

The Cavaliers will hit road for the third week in a row as they travel to Kings Mountain (2-1). Kings Mountain’s Brandon Bell will not be afraid to throw or pass as East will have to devise a plan to stop a team that can score in a hurry.

Hopefully, East can also get D.J. Miller and Travis Rodriguez-Waldroup going to fire up what has potential to be solid offense.

And on a side note, Thomas Jefferson is 4-0-1 this season to head the pack in boys soccer around the county.

In NASCAR, I was glad to see that Michael Waltrip Racing got penalized for what was completely blatant at Richmond. Clint Bowyer intentionally spun out while Ryan Newman captured the lead and Jeff Gordon barely held on to tenth in the standings. If Newman won, Truex would be out of the Chase. Then Bowyer and Brian Vickers received team orders to pit under green, which allowed Joey Logano to gain enough spots to find tenth in the standings over Gordon. Gordon and MWR haven’t been the best of friends in the past 18 months which is why we all suspect that they did what they did. The penalty, a fine of $300,000, a docking of 50 points to Bowyer, Truex and Vickers, plus Truex has been thrown out of the NASCAR playoffs with Newman taking his spot. Might as well give Jeff Gordon spot number 13 in the playoffs, since that was the person MWR was really after in the first place. Just my two cents if NASCAR wants to completely right the ship, but this is a good start.

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