Oak Ridge 21, Clinton 14: Wildcats Survive Home Opener Versus Dragons
Oak Ridge found themselves in another dog fight Friday night, but this week they came out on top.
Welcome to the Friday Night Lights section here in the SRM newsletter. This is a section of the newsletter where I cover high school football both back home in Georgia and here in East Tennessee. Covering high school football is a passion of mine, and I hope that passion shines through in the stories that you’ll read in this very newsletter. I do hope that you enjoy it and type in your email below so you never miss an issue. This newsletter is delivered to your inbox, not your doorstep, daily. Happy reading.
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Clinton is a good football team, that much is certain.
On Friday night at Blankenship Field, Oak Ridge found themselves in another dog fight, only this time it was not with the Bulldogs of Bearden it was with the Dragons of Clinton.
Like a week ago, Oak Ridge found themselves in another one-score game late. As Oak Ridge learned a week ago, you don’t want to be the team who needs to drive to score to either win the game or send it to overtime. You want to be the team that needs just one stop, not the the team that needs just one score.
Last week, the Wildcats were the former.
This week, the Wildcats were the latter.
Life can be funny this way. Sports can be funny this way. Through his first three games as head football coach at Oak Ridge, Scott Cummings has already run the gambit. He experienced a blowout victory over South-Doyle. He experienced a last-second defeat against Bearden. Now, he experienced a last-drive defensive stand by his defense against Clinton. Each week, the Wildcats have found themselves in a different kind of circumstance.
Through three weeks, the Wildcats are 2-1.
Oak Ridge is 2-1 and we still haven’t seen the team at full strength once yet. Star wideout Brandon Heyward was ejected early in the South-Doyle game and missed the Bearden game the following week. Start playmaker Elijah Rogers got hurt early last week and missed this week. Starting tailback Jai Hundley missed this week. Coach Cummings has had to mix-and-match his roster significantly early in the 2022 season, but the Wildcats still find themselves at 2-1 heading into next week’s home contest against Farragut.
There are many great aspects of covering Friday Night Lights in the South, but one of the best is being on the field late. When things get tense on both team’s sidelines. When both teams and coaches can see the game going either way. That is what happened late in this one. It could go either way late into the fourth quarter.
Clinton quarterback Josh Keith was sensational all night. Through three weeks, the Wildcats have excelled in taking away any chunk plays for their opponent. To beat Oak Ridge you have to create a little dent at a time. One tiny dent here, a tiny dent there. You are not going to beat them deep. You are not going to get them into a track meet. That is just not how things go for defensive coordinator Robert Ayers Jr’s defense.
Keith, though, never quit. When Oak Ridge went up 14-0 early in the first quarter, the Dragons could have crumbled on the road against a rival. They did not and most of that was because of Keith.
Down 14-7 in the fourth quarter, Keith drove Clinton down the field. On the play before their touchdown run to tie it, Keith rolled left and hit a Madden-like spin move to get by two Oak Ridge defenders and get the Dragons inside the 10-yard-line.
Coach Cummings told me after the game, “Clinton, let me tell you, this isn’t old Clinton team. They’ve got athletes, they’ve got a lot of talent. That quarterback is so hard to defend.”
The next play, the Dragons punched it in and tied it up. (However, Clinton came oh-so-very-close to missing the extra-point try and making all of Keith’s heroic efforts moot.)
To the Wildcats’ credit, they did not waver.
After a big-time kick return to give Oak Ridge great field position near the fifty-yard-line, the Wildcats put the game in tailback De’Jauvis Dozier’s hands. On his third-straight carry, Dozier broke what felt like his nineteenth tackle on the night to put the Wildcats up a touchdown late 21-14.
After the game, Coach Cummings said of his star tailback, “Dozier’s honestly, honest to goodness, probably one of the top two or three running backs I’ve ever had and I’ve been doing this a long time. That kid is powerful, he’s got the vision and the feet.”
Oak Ridge’s defense would later stop the Dragons on fourth-and-short to clinch the victory. The defense was dominant all night long, led by Brian Kelley at the linebacker spot and Izzy Mitchell at the corner spot. “Brian Kelley is just a football player,” Coach Cummings told me after the game.
Not only was Kelley a force again on defense with tackle-after-tackle, but on Oak Ridge’s opening drive, Kelley lined up at tight end and proceeded to reel in two grabs after running the same seam route over the middle with the second resulting in a touchdown for Oak Ridge. “We can put a lot on Brian, and he’ll take it and he’s very coachable and he had been saying, ‘You get me that ball on that stuff and I’m going to score.’” Kelley was right and his TD snag was the difference in the game.
Next week, the Wildcats host the Admirals as they look to improve to 3-1 on the young 2022 high school football season.
Chase Thomas is the Sports Renaissance Man, Atlanta Sports Guy and Vol For Life. He is a graduate student at the University of Tennessee and resides in Knoxville, TN. Chase obtained his undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of North Georgia. He has written for a variety of publications that include Outsider, SB Nation, VICE Sports, SI’s The Cauldron, Cox Media Group & ESPN’s TrueHoop Network. You can email him at chasethomaspodcast[at]gmail.