by Brian Heard
Germantown Gazette
10-04-2006

Eagles make sure clock strikes midnight on Cinderella Kennedy

It’s hard to blame the Kennedy High football team for feeling confident entering Friday’s Montgomery 3A Division tilt with Seneca Valley. The Cavaliers were 3-0, and chants of ‘‘We want Seneca” rang through the air during their previous game at home against B-CC (a 34-0 win). And, it’s hard to blame them for some of the trash-talking leading up to the game — when’s the last time Kennedy football had anything to trash-talk about, give ’em a break.

But the pre-game antics Friday in Germantown, the running on the Seneca sidelines before kickoff was probably one step too many, and served to further infuriate the homestanding Screaming Eagles, which used all of the above as motivation in a dominating 49-7 win.

‘‘Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true,” said Seneca senior lineman Donald Langley. ‘‘They walked on our sideline, being all cocky. Well, we gave them what they wanted — we gave them Seneca, we gave them a show.

‘‘Everybody was all rah-rah-rah about them being 3-0. All we heard was Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy. I’ll say it: The point is we’re faster, quicker and stronger. They hadn’t seen this much speed on defense; they hadn’t seen this much speed on defense. It was just overwhelming for them.”

The pre-game hype was justified — this was movie script stuff. Here was Kennedy, with a first-year head coach — Gunnard Twyner, a former NFL wide receiver who spent two seasons (2003-04) as an assistant at Seneca Valley — which had lost its last 25 games on the field heading into the season, going up against the state’s historically most successful program in Seneca, winners of 12 state titles.

Mighty Seneca (3-1, 2-0 in the Montgomery 3A) hadn’t looked so mighty in its first three games — narrowly beating Wheaton and Churchill and losing (by just two points) to rival Northwest. Kennedy (3-1, 2-1 in the 3A) had hammered three opponents.

But the Cavaliers hadn’t played anyone of the Eagles’ caliber and the results spoke for themselves Friday. Seneca totally dominated the line of scrimmage, out-rushing the Cavaliers, 366-54. Senior running back Shawn Perry carried 15 times for 224 yards and scored three touchdowns (4, 60, 67 yards). Seneca averaged 10.8 yards per carry; Kennedy averaged 2.5.

‘‘We learned a big lesson with this game,” said Twyner. ‘‘[The players] need to learn sometimes you gotta take a whuppin’ to give a whuppin’, and tonight we took one. [Seneca] flat out out-played us in the trenches, they blocked better and tackled better.”

That said, the game really was competitive in the first half. Perry’s first touchdown came in the first quarter (a 4-yard run) and sophomore quarterback George Lerch’s 2-yard dive in the second put the Eagles up 14-0. But junior quarterback Melvin Harris (14 of 23 for 108 yards,1 interception, 1 TD) got hot with a short passing game and led a scoring drive that culminated in his 5-yard touchdown pass to senior running back Mike Henley, which cut the Cavaliers’ deficit to 14-7.

The Eagles came right back and stole momentum away for good on a perfectly executed 59-yard reverse by senior Fred Branch for a touchdown on the first play from scrimmage of their next possession. It proved to be the decisive play as Seneca took a 21-7 lead into halftime.

‘‘We cut it to 14-7, then they hit that reverse for a touchdown and that killed; that killed our momentum, our thoughts and killed everything we were trying to do,” Twyner said. ‘‘They’d never been in that situation before and they didn’t pull it together and shake that play off at all.”

The rest of the game was a Seneca showcase. Perry scored from 60 yards out early in the third quarter. Then senior defensive back David Purvis picked off Harris and returned it to the Cavaliers’ 1-yard line, setting up Lerch’s 1-yard plunge for a score. Next, Perry went 67 yards for a score, and in the span of five minutes in the middle of the third quarter the score ballooned to 42-7 and the rout was on.

Senior Jourdan Brooks added a 7-yard scoring run in the fourth quarter to account for the final margin. Brooks also led some of the celebration on the Seneca sidelines during the second half, which included some ribbing of the Kennedy fans.

‘‘Don’t sleep on the Valley, that’s all I can say,” Brooks said. ‘‘We had a couple of close games and we lost to Northwest this year, so [Kennedy] came in here thinking they’re going to run all over us. They were calling us out this week. But we showed them when you come to the Valley you’re not gonna win; we punish people at the Valley.”

Notes: Seneca senior kicker Freddy Santos made all seven extra-point attempts in the game for the Eagles. ... In addition to passing for 108 yards, Harris led the Cavaliers with 53 yards rushing and caught a pass for six yards.