Lions outlast Hornets in two-day, two-field game
BIRMINGHAM -- It was a game that began on one field and ended on another — and began in one month and ended in another.
But the result was the same from beginning to end.
Briarwood Christian School picked up where it left off from Friday night, when its game at Chelsea High School was suspended because of storms. On Saturday, Briarwood defeated the Hornets 19-6 in the Lions’ season-opening football game.
The contest started at Chelsea on Friday night, but was halted 50 seconds into the second period. By the time two lines of storms had moved through, the Hornets’ natural-grass field was in rough shape, so both teams agreed to move play to Briarwood and its artificial turf on Saturday morning.
JR Tran-Reno, the Vanderbilt commit who moved from running back/receiver for the Lions last season to quarterback for his senior year, threw a touchdown pass to Luke Prewett for 59 yards on Friday night. Briarwood added two more points when Mark Hand and Matthew McKenna blocked a Chelsea punt out of the end zone for a safety, giving the Lions a 9-0 lead before Mother Nature called a halt to the proceedings.
When play resumed Saturday, both sides struggled a bit as they acclimated themselves to football in the morning. Briarwood mounted an 11-play drive late in the second period, only to fumble the ball away on the Hornets 21-yard line. Chelsea could not capitalize, though, and the drive stalled out when time expired in the half.
The struggles continued in the third quarter. Prewett ran a spectacular 47-yard scramble on the Lions’ opening drive, breaking away from four Chelsea tacklers, but Briarwood could only muster a Noah Nall 24-yard field goal from that effort.
Early in the fourth period, the Hornets caught a break when the Lions couldn’t handle a bad snap on a punt deep in their own territory. Chelsea took the ball on the Briarwood 18, and three plays later quarterback Turner Griffin paired up with receiver Lando Nichols for a 6-yard touchdown pass with 8:28 left in the game to cut the deficit to 12-6.
But the Lions answered on the next drive as they marched to the end zone on eight straight rushing plays, with Tran-Reno applying the kill shot on a 1-yard touchdown surge with 5:30 left.
Briarwood coach Fred Yancey elected to keep the ball on the ground the entire second half, and in the fourth quarter replaced Tran-Reno with sophomore Jonah Carroll at quarterback.
The Hornets suffered a setback when wide receiver Andrew Bartlewski injured his wrist late in the game. He was taken out with an air cast.
The unusual circumstances of the game made for a few changes in the way both coaches handled preparation and play. Even Yancey, who started coaching at Briarwood well before his players were even born, had never been in a game split between two venues overnight. But there wasn’t much additional coaching done during the long break.
“We said pretty much everything we needed to tell them during the storm delay on Friday,” he joked. “After an hour or so, we ran out of things to keep them entertained.”
For first-year Chelsea coach Dustin Goodwin, the changes were a bit of a challenge.
“I thought our guys adjusted well, and played hard in the fourth quarter, and we got better this week,” Goodwin said.
The Hornets (0-2) face Carver next Thursday, while Briarwood (1-0) heads to Pleasant Grove as both teams open region play.
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