By Donald Heath
Special for the Effingham Herald
SPRINGFIELD – Effingham County senior wide receiver Ryan Wells has a lot of friends on South Effingham’s football team.
He says usually they don’t talk too much about the annual rivalry game.
“If they talk, I can chirp a little bit,” Wells said. “It’s kind of normal now. We own the county.”
The 47 points and the margin of victory were the largest in the 31-game series, led by ECHS 19-12.
A capacity crowd of about 8,000 jammed into Rebel Field and each side cheered enthusiastically with anticipation at the start. After kickoff, the cheering was a little more one-sided.
“I’m not lying. It’s like something I’ve never seen,” ECHS coach John Ford said. “It’s intense. There’s a lot of emotion. There aren’t many stadiums in Georgia that full before a game. It matters to both sides of the county. It’s a stressful week but a fun week.”
It was probably a little less stressful for the Rebels (2-3, 2-1 Region 1-5A), who flexed their speed advantage during an efficient night. Junior quarterback Tucker Perkins showed no favorites in spreading the football to his fleet-footed receivers while throwing for 266 yards and four touchdowns.
Perkins hooked up with Wells for scores of 30 and 60 yards and had TD passes of 12 yards to Trayvis Hunter and 45 yards to Lamar Roberts.
Perkins completed 15 straight passes during his 15-of-17 passing night. Two more TD passes were negated by penalties.
“Tucker’s a talented kid and he had a good week of practice, and he did a good job getting it to the right guys and the line kept him clean,” Ford said. “It starts upfront too. None of that speed on the perimeter is effective if the line isn’t blocking for them. The offensive line played really, really well and that allowed us to make it a space game when we had the ball and we thought that would be good for us.”
Wells finished with four catches for 108 yards. Q King had five catches for 89 yards, Roberts had two catches for 50 yards and Hunter added 11 yards on three receptions.
“Speed and physicality, that’s what we talked about all week, and we put them to use,” Roberts said. “It’s another ‘W’ in our books and we keep on moving.”
Meanwhile, South just couldn’t get untracked after an 11-play drive on its second possession got within the ECHS’ 17-yard line before turning the ball over on downs.
“We have a lot of mistakes to fix,” SEHS coach Loren Purvis said. “I don’t question how hard (my players) fought. They wanted to win this game. But when you’re making too many mistakes, not even lining up correctly, you can’t expect to do any better than what just happened.”
The Mustangs (0-4, 0-2) finished with just 32 offensive yards and three first downs.
ECHS’s first-teamers scored touchdowns on all seven of their full possessions. The Rebels led 20-0 at halftime and pulled away with three TDs during their 10 third-quarter plays.
Perkins was 5-for-5 for 145 yards and two TDs (a 45-yarder to Roberts and a 60-yarder to Wells on consecutive ECHS plays) in the third quarter.
The win allowed the Rebels’ seniors to go 4-0 against South. They’ve outscored the Mustangs 152-10 in the four games.
“It was really just another game, but it’s a little different because of the crowd, same county and everything,” Wells said. “We treated it the same way in practice and we treated it the same way when we went on the field. … All the receivers had good games. The O-line had a good game. The defense had an outstanding game. We’ve been waiting for that for a while.”
The win was the second in a row for the Rebels and sets up a key matchup next Friday with undefeated Lakeside, a 28-14 upset winner over Glynn Academy.
The Panthers (5-0, 3-0) have been the surprise of Region 1-5A after winning just three games a year ago.
South will be back in action against Evans (2-2, 0-2) Sept. 27 at the Corral.
