Missed PAT with 37 seconds left allows Arrows to escape

Football can be cruel theater.

The best team doesn’t always win the game. The biggest impact player doesn’t always score the winning touchdown. The impossible happens, the obvious fails and the unstoppable is stopped.

In the mid-autumn chill Friday night, Warren Central looked like it was headed to being the happy recipient of a dramatic unraveling. The Vikings, whose offense had been shut out by Clinton all game, scored two touchdowns in the last seven minutes — only to lose on the easiest play of all, the extra point.

Nick Wright missed the PAT wide right after Chris Stamps scored on an 11-yard touchdown pass with 37 seconds left, allowing Clinton to escape with a 14-13 victory.

“You’re going to lose some ballgames. We’ve got to handle it the right way, and we will,” WC coach Josh Morgan said. “The bottom line is, for us to do what we want to do we’ve got to get better and do some things better. We’re going to use this on a positive note and find some ways to make our football team better.”

Warren Central trailed 14-0 with 7:10 remaining. With a sold out crowd shivering from the cold and the nerves, WC began its desperation drive with two negative rushes and a nine-yard pass. But on fourth down, with the shared driver’s seat of Region 2-6A and rivalry bragging rights dangling on the line, wide out Larry Ferguson snatched an Alex Stevens pass with one hand to continue the drive and give his team a faint pulse. Just two plays later, Stevens connected with Miraculous Powers in the end zone to cut the Arrows’ lead to 14-7 with 4:12 left in regulation.

Warren Central then used its unrelenting defense to force a Clinton punt and give itself life in the final act.

Stevens marched his team down the field to the 25-yard line before three straight incompletions brought up fourth down. Stamps lined up wide, practically begging for the ball, and hauled in a pass in traffic, absorbing a hard hit and giving the Vikings a first down. On the next play, Stamps took a screen pass and darted into the end zone behind a red wall of blockers, igniting the sold-out crowd at Viking Stadium and sending it into a collective shriek that pierced the air like the cold gust of wind that preceded it.

With everything hanging in the balance, Wright lined up for the tying extra point. Clinton (8-1, 4-1 Region 2-6A), in an attempt to ice the kicker, called time out. Coming out of the break, Wright — who was 31-of-32 on extra points and 7-of-8 on field goals coming into the game — pushed his kick to the right.

“I can’t take anything away from Clinton. They did a phenomenal job. They’ve got a great ballclub. I think they outplayed us in the first half. We started coming on there toward the end. We tried to find a way to win and just came up short,” Morgan said.

WC mustered only 51 yards in the first half before finding its rhythm late in the fourth quarter. Stevens ended the game 20-of-28 for 103 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions. Stamps had 11 catches for 108 yards.

The Vikings (8-1, 4-1) won’t have any time to feel sorry for themselves, though, with a showdown against No. 1 Starkville looming next week. WC is still in the hunt for the region championship and Morgan knows his team will have to bounce back both physically and mentally.

“We’re still in a very good position to do the things that we want to do, which is to be district champions and state champions. That’s the talk here and that’s what we want it to continue to be,” Morgan said. “All that’s still in front of us. We made the road a little bit harder on us but we’ve got to put it on the line again next week and move forward from there, and hopefully we’ll have a good outing against Starkville.”