PLAYOFFS: Melrose @ Liberty Magnet
Melrose-0 VS Liberty Magnet-47
Friday night the Melrose Golden Wildcats traveled to Jackson, TN for their second round playoff match-up against undefeated Liberty Magnet.
The Golden Wildcats are as healthy as they have been since the beginning of the season. Adhai Paige is back in the line up for the third consecutive week from a wrist injury. Michael Malone is back in action for the second consecutive week. And last but not least, Starsky Miller is also back in the line up. The only missing piece is Kendrick Jones, who recently underwent surgery to repair his ACL.
In the teams pre game meeting, each coach addressed the team. This time the speeches weren’t about game plans, but they had more of a farewell feeling to them.
Melrose defers on the coin toss,therefore Liberty Magnet receives the ball first. The Crusaders put six points on the board in the first minute and thirty seconds. On their first offensive series Melrose actually loses yards. The Golden Wildcats punt in a 4th and 44 situation. The Liberty Magnet Crusaders score another touchdown when they get the ball back. Less than halfway through the first quarter the score is 14-0. By the end of the first quarter the score is 21-0. At this point I knew it would be a long rest of the night for the Golden Wildcats. Throughout the season they have had a really hard time recovering from falling behind early in the game. By halftime the score was 34-0.
The half-time pep talk from the coach wasn’t one of “How to go out and win the game” but more of a “This is our last game and we can’t go out like this”. I sat among the team and listened to Principal Neal, Coach Ford, and other members of the coaching staff address the team and I was confident that someone would step up and carry to team to at least a moral victory.
Melrose failed to score on their opening drive and Liberty Magnet manged to score on theirs. At this point the “mercy rule is put into effect and the remainder of the game is played on a running clock. This doesn’t really give Melrose a chance to make anything happen.
