By Donald Heath
Special for the Effingham Herald
Effingham County football coach John Ford found the perfect analogy to describe his Rebels during their season-opening clash with Class 5A’s sixth-ranked Houston County last Friday night.
“It was like we dropped them in the deep end to see if they could swim,” Ford said.
The Rebels had to spit out some water early, but gave a strong account of themselves despite the 44-41 loss on the road to the Bears.
Now Ford goes from game planning against HoCo quarterback Antwann Hill, a University of Memphis commit, to another gunslinger in Rashawn Truell of New Hampstead this week.
ECHS hosts the Phoenix (1-1) on Friday at 7:30 p.m.
“If anyone in the state opens with two better quarterbacks, I’d like to see them,” Ford said.
But the Rebels have a pretty good quarterback too. Junior Tucker Perkins, making his first varsity start, made a good first impression while directing ECHS to 31 second-half points.
Perkins completed 18-of-31 passes for 378 yards and three touchdowns and also ran for another score.
“Tucker battled and made some good throws,” Ford said. “He was able to sharpen his skills against a very good team.”
Perkins’ favorite target during the night, wideout Ryan Wells, caught eight passes for 203 yards and two touchdowns. Wells’ receiving yards are believed to be the most by a Rebel since Randy Scott had 241 against Burke County in 2019.
“I would have liked to have had a GPS on Ryan. No way he didn’t run 10 miles (Friday night),” Ford said. “We also played Ryan a lot of snaps at safety and Houston County runs a lot of (deep) vertical routes. So do we.”
Perkins and Wells hooked up for TD passes of 74 and 12 yards during the final four minutes as ECHS sliced a 17-point deficit.
Q King caught Perkins’ first scoring toss – a 15-yarder – early in the fourth quarter.
King finished with four catches for 54 yards and Lamar Roberts caught a pass for 56 yards.
Perkins had a 2-yard TD run in the third quarter.
Rebels’ soccer goalie Michael Deien booted field goals of 24 and 21 yards and sophomore Kris Swinney returned a kickoff 85 yards for a score.
Sophomore running back Jmere Doe-Davis rushed for 48 yards and caught two passes for 24 yards.
ECHS finished with an impressive 432 offensive yards, but the defense struggled to slow down Hill and the Bears who had 509 yards of offense.
Houston County had a 23-3 lead in the second quarter before Swinney’s kickoff return began a series of back-and-forth scoring.
“If we cleaned up the mistakes and tackled better, we could have won this game,” Ford said.
New Hampstead’s offense with Truell and a group of fleet-footed receivers can create similar problems. The Phoenix carved up South Effingham for 56 points during a 56-35 win on Aug. 15.
“If you let (Truell) sit back there and throw, you’ll have a long day at the office,” Ford said.
