Elmore 'proud' of Hornets despite season-ending loss
CHELSEA -- The season ended the same way it began for the Chelsea High School football team.
With a 37-29 loss to Cullman on Friday night, the Hornets bookended the year with losses, but there were more similarities than that.
Chelsea (2-8) put a team on the field all season that showed a consistent effort from the opening kickoff to the final horn, regardless of the scoreboard. The Hornets showed a great deal of pride each week, even as the losses mounted.
“Proud of our guys for continuing to battle to the end,” Chelsea head coach Chris Elmore said. “They continue to show what kind of character they’ve got. It’s rare to say when you go 2-8 how proud and happy you are of a team, but I love this bunch.”
On paper, Cullman should have run away with a victory on Friday, but the Hornets refused to let that happen. The Cats came in with a 6-3 mark and were undoubtedly looking ahead to their future playoff run. There wasn’t the evident on-field disparity that one would expect with the teams’ nearly opposite records.
“I thought we were good enough to win, we just got in too big of a hole again,” Elmore said. “It’s kind of our story of the year. We got down 17-0, and that ended up being the difference. I thought we outplayed them in the second half.”
Even after digging that hole in the first half, Chelsea dug its heels in and made the game intriguing, as the offensive fireworks rained down over the final 18 minutes of game action.
Turner Griffin hit Colton Carter on a tunnel screen and he took it in from 19 yards to make it 17-7 midway through the third quarter. Cullman answered right back with a 15-yard run by Jayden Sullins to open up a 23-7 margin. Right before the conclusion of the third quarter, Kendrick Simpson capped off a long drive with a 19-yard run to cut the deficit to 23-15.
Cullman put together a long, time-crunching, 15-play drive to begin the fourth quarter, punching it in on quarterback Fletcher Jennings’ 9-yard run to make the score 30-15 with just 4:43 to play.
Even with the clock dwindling, Chelsea stuck to what it had done best all evening and mulched 67 yards on the ground on five plays. Freshman running back Collier Blair ran over multiple Cullman defenders and combined for 31 yards on the first two carries, while Simpson took it the rest of the way and scored on a 9-yard run to make it 30-22.
Both teams ran the ball with great effectiveness all game. The duo of Simpson (25 carries, 163 yards and two touchdowns) and Blair (21 carries for 149 yards) racked up 312 total rushing yards for Chelsea. Jennings ran for 114 yards on 20 carries for Cullman.
“Collier’s going to be a good one, and Kendrick had a good night too for his senior night,” Elmore said.
Jennings found Reese Harbison for a 56-yard touchdown on third-and-15 to seemingly put the game out of reach with 2:55 to play. But Chelsea had a response yet again, as Colby Lambert took a tunnel screen 18 yards for a touchdown to narrow the score to its final margin. The Hornets onside kick proved unsuccessful, and Cullman ran out the rest of the clock.
It was not decisive in the outcome, but part of Chelsea’s 17-point deficit came via a pair of calls that went against the Hornets. Chelsea marched inside the 30-yard line in the second quarter, already trailing 14-0, before a pass that seemingly skipped into a Cullman defender’s arms was ruled an interception.
And with time dwindling in the second quarter, Chelsea’s defense made a stop at the 2-yard line with less than five seconds on the clock. Cullman had no timeouts remaining and would not have had time to run another play, but a flag was thrown and play was stopped. The officials waved off the penalty, but the clock remained stopped, allowing Cullman time to kick a 19-yard field goal as time expired.
Friday night was about sending Chelsea’s seniors off the right way, but preparation for next season begins soon.
“We’ve got to celebrate these seniors tonight and I hate it for them to have this kind of season, but we’ll regroup here in a few weeks and start getting ready for the next one,” Elmore said.
Cullman begins its journey in the Class 6A state playoffs next week at Ramsay.