VALDOSTA — Valdosta High tried to split its team up evenly for the spring game, and the result was an 8-8 tie Friday at Bazemore-Hyder Stadium.
The Gold team scored on the first possession of the game, and held the lead until Marcus McNair’s 25-yard touchdown run with 3:40 remaining helped the Black team earn the tie.
“An 8-8 score is about what we’d hoped for,” Valdosta head coach Rick Tomberlin said. “We tried to divide the teams up evenly, and make it as competitive as possible.
“I thought the game went well. We looked a whole lot better than we did last spring.”
On the game’s opening possession, Gold went on a seven-play, 70-yard scoring drive. David Arnold, a two-time All-Region running back at Cook who moved to Valdosta earlier this year, carried three times on the drive for 33 yards, and caught a 19-yard pass from Tavaris Belcher for a key first down. On third-and-9 from the Black 12, Gold lined up in a stack-I formation, and Belcher tossed a play-action pass that Curtis Weatherspoon hauled in at the 2 and took in for a touchdown.
Belcher then kept the ball on a bootleg and ran in the two-point conversion, giving his team an 8-0 lead.
After that, the game was primarily a defensive stalemate. Each team moved the ball at times, but neither was able to move the ball inside the other team’s 30 until the end of the game.
“The defense has been ahead of the offense this spring, and that’s what we expected,” Tomberlin said. “If the offense moved the ball up and down the field on our defense, I would be worried about our defense. But the defense has had a good spring.”
Black trailed most of the game. The offense was unable to move the ball any further than the Gold 47 for the first three quarters.
But in the fourth quarter, veteran quarterback Michael Turner led the Black offense on an 11-play drive that lasted over six minutes, and included two conversions on fourth down.
On third-and-5 from the Gold 25, Turner handed off to McNair, who ran off right tackle. McNair made a defender miss, turned the corner, got a block downfield, and sprinted across the goal line for the touchdown. On the two-point conversion play, Gold blitzed, but Turner was ready, and lofted a pass into the end zone. Rising freshman tight end Jay Rome jumped up and pulled in the pass to tie the score.
Gold nearly grabbed the lead back on the ensuing possession. On the first play, Belcher threw deep to a wide-open Marcus Ewings, who caught the ball, but stumbled at the Black 32 for a 38-yard completion. But Black recorded sacks on two of the next three plays (defenders could not hit the quarterback, but the officials blew the whistle when they got close to him), and stalled the drive. That all but ensured the tie.
The offensive star of the game was Arnold, who gained 66 yards on 14 carries and caught a 19-yard pass for the Gold team. The overall star was Weatherspoon, a starting linebacker who played some offense as well. Weatherspoon caught two passes for 51 yards and a touchdown, and had a sack and several tackles on defense. Belcher completed 4-of-6 passes for 112 yards and a touchdown.
For Black, McNair gained 51 yards on nine carries, with a touchdown. Desmond Smith added 22 yards on four carries. Turner was 3-of-12 for 17 yards passing.
The spring season is now over for Valdosta. The Wildcats will take a break until June 11, when summer workouts begin.
“I thought we had a good spring,” Tomberlin said. “We saw a lot of improvement, and I feel good about how the spring went. We’ve still got a lot of work to do, but I believe we have the potential to be a pretty good football team this fall.”
Before the varsity game, there were three two-quarter games. Valdosta Middle, J.L. Newbern Middle and the Valdosta High ninth grade team played, with each team playing in two of the three games.
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The Wildcats scrimmaged to an 8-8 stalemate Friday night
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