Coach Ryan Antoine began escalating his voice as he repeated to his team, “Way! To! Keep! Going!” until he was grabbing and shaking Ernest “Bam” Curl in celebration for the final emphatic shouts of the phrase.
Westgate had fallen behind by nine points, the game’s largest margin, after a long Southside drive that ate most of the third quarter.
But the the Tigers rallied with a fury, combining its explosive offense and swarming defense to score the final three touchdowns — all capped by Curl’s 73-yard scoop-and-score fumble recovery helped put an exclamation mark on the 42-33 comeback victory.
“It’s just what we’ve been through,” Antoine said. “We talk about how we’ve got to go through adversity, we’ve got to go through tough times, and we just want to keep playing. We know if we kept playing, we kept getting reps, things were gonna go in our favor. Our guys played hard. Our guys work so hard. Our guys have been through so much. But, like I say, it’s only 2-0, so we can’t get caught up in it.
“Yes, it’s a big game. Yes, it’s an emotional game. Yes, it’s a close game. They got us last year. We wanted to get them back. Our guys wanted this game. Our guys wanted this game. This was the game that was circled on our calendar, but by no stretch of the imagination is that gonna be the game that defines what we’ve got going on. We’ve got to keep getting better.”
Westgate pushed the ball quickly downfield for a third scoring connection of the night between quarterback Noah Antoine and wide receiver Cayden Lancelin to trim its deficit to 33-30 in the final minute of the third quarter.
The Tigers forced a punt just a few plays later as they continued to fly around the field and find more success stopping the Sharks’ rushing attack in the fourth quarter than they had in the first three.
“Keep the energy up, keep coming together, keep them boys on the right track, don’t lose focus,” said junior cornerback Shadon Lee, who was first to several plays on the perimeter, including the third down early in the fourth. “We’re all we got; we’re all we need.”
Noah Antoine and the offense picked their way back to the lead with a couple explosive plays to Jackilon Roberson and then the go-ahead score to Joshua John in the back corner of the end zone.
The Sharks marched their way into the red zone for a potential answer, but a mishandled ball in the backfield suddenly presented a golden opportunity for the Tigers bouncing around until Curl could corral the recovery and rumble his way with a convoy of teammates all the way to the other end of the field for the dagger.
“Just working in practice, going hard in practice and translating it to the game,” he said. “I prayed before the game, and everything just came together at the end … I was running out of breath, but everything was good, though. We changed the game.”
Added Lancelin: “He said he was gonna get one before the game. Two days ago he had one in the JV game, and just hard work pays off.”
This article will be updated further…
