AHSAA PLAYOFFS: Cottage Hill ends Trinity's season
Trinity's Reed Bledsoe attempts to tackle Cottage Hill’s Cohen Perea in Friday’s playoff game at Trinity. (Tim Gayle)
By TIM GAYLE
For one quarter, Trinity took advantage of a pair of Cottage Hill Christian miscues to grab control of the first-round matchup between the Wildcats and the Warriors at Ragsdale-Boykin Field on Friday night.
Then, in a stunning reversal of fortune, Cottage Hill scored 34 unanswered points to defeat Trinity 34-17 in the first round of the Class A Private playoffs.
“They had a good second half,” Trinity coach Brian Seymore said. “They made some adjustments at halftime. There’s about four or five plays in a game that’s going to determine the outcome and they made those plays.”
Cottage Hill (9-2) will face the Bayside Academy-St. James winner in the second round of the playoffs next week. That game was postponed due to a power failure and will be played on Saturday.
Trinity ends the season at 7-4, marking the seventh consecutive season the Wildcats have won seven or more games.
“It’s not the result you want, but hopefully our guys coming back will learn from it,” Seymore said, praising the performance this season of his eight seniors. “This is the senior class I came in on, so it’s a special group that spent four years with me. I’m going to challenge our kids. We’re going to play really good competition and I thought we had one of the toughest, if not the toughest, schedule in Single-A. It’s to prepare you for games like this. There were just too many mistakes, too many turnovers. But I just thank the seniors. I love those guys.”
In the first quarter, the Wildcats had all of the momentum. Cottage Hill quarterback Shamar Toodle spent much of the first 12 minutes chasing bad snaps that resulted in four negative plays totaling 36 yards in losses. Punter Kenneth McGrew was tackled for an 11-yard loss on his first attempt, leading to a 20-yard drive and a touchdown by Trinity quarterback Patton Mitchell, and his second attempt was blocked, leading to a 46-yard field goal by Victor Fahel and a 10-0 lead.
Reed Beldsoe had both the tackle of McGrew and the blocked punt, part of a 10-tackle night by the Trinity sophomore. Fellow linebacker Wilson Cherry led the Trinity defense with 11 tackles, while Drew Sanders and William Hughes had 10 tackles each.
Cottage Hill would drive within inches of the goal line on the first play of the second quarter, but an illegal procedure penalty backed up the Warriors to the Trinity 6-yard line and the next snap sailed over Toddle’s head, resulting in a 29-yard line.
Trinity followed with its best drive of the night, going 65 yards in 12 plays, with Mitchell’s third-and-14 pass to Mackin Roth covering the final 18 yards for a 17-0 lead with 5:22 remaining in the first half.
From there, the game took a bizarre turn. Cottage Hill, which had managed just 32 total yards to that point, started clicking. Trinity, meanwhile, was held in check the remainder of the night.
“A couple of personal fouls hurt us early and they got going on a couple of drives,” Seymore said. “They capitalized on fourth down and hit the long pass right before halftime that made it 17-14.”
Toodle’s fourth-and-three pass to James Davis turned into a 14-yard touchdown play that made it 17-7. After an eight-play Trinity drive stalled, Toodle ran 25 yards on first down, then connected with Xykais Thomas for 53 yards to the Trinity 2, setting up a touchdown pass to Trevor Thomas with seven seconds left.
The Wildcats struggled to find any offense in the second half, but the big plays continued by the Warriros as a punt snap from the Trinity 41 sailed over Land Sharpless’ head and was eventually returned by the Warriors for a touchdown and a 21-17 lead.
On the next possession, Trinity’s defense appeared to come up with a fourth-down stop short of the line, but officials signaled a first down and Toodle ran 13 yards to the end zone on the next play. Davis came up with the next big play, but his interception didn’t translate into points, so a second interception by the Cottage Hill defensive back was returned 43 yards to the end zone to cap a stunning end to Trinity’s season.
“Obviously, they had a couple of breakdowns on special teams and our breakdown was huge,” Seymore said. “They gained momentum. They made the plays down the stretch. They’ve got a very athletic team and they gave us some problems.”
Toodle finished with 117 yards on 21 carries, running for one touchdown and throwing for two more while completing 14 of 21 passes for 249 yards.
“We knew what kind of athlete the quarterback was and they had big tall physical receivers,” Seymore said. “They made the plays when they had to. When you get to this point, obviously, you want to be successful but I thought they made more plays tonight.”