Alabama Christian wins over St. James in overtime thriller

Action from Alabama Christian’s win over St. James on Friday. (By Ryan Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

It wasn’t a game for the faint of heart.

Delayed three weeks by coronavirus, the war between the two remaining unbeaten teams in 4A Region 2 lived up to all the hype. And when the pair couldn’t settle the issue in 48 minutes, they needed an overtime to sort out which team would emerge as the front runner for the region title.

Alabama Christian quarterback Jalen Clark powered the final 9 yards for the only touchdown in OT as the Eagles battled back one last time to turn away St. James, 47-41, at Carlisle Field on Friday night.

The senior quarterback put on a show for the ages, rushing for 206 yards and four touchdowns on 21 carries while completing 11 of 19 passes for 242 yards and three touchdowns. He needed every yard and every point because his freshman counterpart, K.J. Jackson, was nearly as efficient, passing for 265 yards and four touchdowns while rushing for another. 

Perhaps more impressively, the 14-year-old weathered ACA’s best shot and his teammate’s miscues to bring his team back from a 19-0 deficit and force overtime with his final pass attempt, a 58-yard completion to Ethan Beard for a game-tying touchdown with 4:51 remaining in regulation.

“Both No. 1’s played really well,” ACA coach Nate Sanford said of the quarterbacks. “It’s extraordinary that theirs is just a freshman. He’s got a great future ahead of him.”

If there was a preseason favorite to this matchup, ACA had a veteran group of returning starters while St. James was rebuilding on both sides of the ball. That experience showed early as the Eagles stormed out to a 19-point lead. ACA took the opening drive 65 yards in five plays, scoring on a 32-yard pass from Clark to a wide-open and uncovered Demari Moore.

Then the jitters took over as a high snap to St. James punter Baxton Berrey turned into a fumble and a 15-yard loss that Clark cashed into a 7-yard touchdown run on the next play. A fumble on the Trojans’ next play from scrimmage resulted in another touchdown as Clark broke loose from pressure and scrambled 39 yards, then the final 6 yards two plays later for a stunning 19-0 lead.

“We played as bad as a football team can play in the first half and dug ourselves a deep hole,” St. James coach Jimmy Perry said. “Turnovers, busted coverages and stuff like that. It wasn’t anything we didn’t work on, we just busted it. We settled down, came back in the second half and clawed our way back. I’m very proud of the effort the guys gave. We’ve just got to make a few more plays at the end. It’s a young football team, we’ll get better, we just weren’t good enough tonight.”

Both teams traded touchdowns before the Trojans came roaring back. Jackson, who had already found Clayton Craft running free behind the ACA secondary for a 30-yard score, hit Beard with a 19-yard pass in the back of the end zone to make it 26-14 at the half, then hit Cooper Wright with a short pass that turned into a 61-yard scoring play after a missed tackle, trimming the deficit to 26-20.

“We just knew we had to maintain focus,” Clark said. “We lost focus. When we came back out (for the second half), we knew what we had to do and when they scored, we knew it was showtime.”

Back came the Eagles as Clark faked a toss left, then broke into the open at right end for a 36-yard touchdown run following a pair of passes that put his team in scoring position. The Trojans answered with a 9-yard touchdown run by Cosner Harrison, who finished with 132 yards on 23 carries, then took a brief lead with 7:31 remaining on Jackson’s 4-yard plunge and Holt Harrison’s extra point for a 34-33 lead.

The Eagles answered again, this time on a spectacular hook-and-lateral play as Clark hit Hayes Hunt with a 3-yard pass and Hunt quickly flipped the ball to the speedy Moore for the final 58 yards. Clark then found an uncovered Trey Schlemmer in the end zone for the two-point conversion and a 41-34 lead, only to have Jackson rally his team two plays later with the game-tying touchdown.

The two offenses, which combined for 88 points and 921 yards, would find the only thing stopping either in the latter stages of the game was the clock. ACA turned deliberate in the game’s final possession in regulation, but ran into trouble after Craft sacked Clark for a six-yard loss with 19 seconds left and Clark remained on the ground, suffering from cramps that forced him to the sideline.

He limped back onto the field with one second remaining and his team at the St. James 44, shaking off two attempts to sack him, then heaving the ball to an open Garrett Weathers in the end zone, only to have Adam Garnett break up the pass at the goal line at the last moment.  

“You see it in the movies and you’re like, ‘I would love to do that,”’ Clark said of his dramatic return, “but in real life it hurts.”

With so much offense on display, Sanford elected to play defense in overtime after winning the coin toss.

“That’s the only decision to make,” he said. “We wanted to know what we had to do on offense (after a St. James’ possession). They were having their kicking struggles and our regular kicker is out right now. Our offensive coordinator, J.L. Dockins, said when we went on offense after we stopped them, ‘Coach, we’re not kicking.’”

St. James’ possession was a nightmare. On first down, Jackson bobbled the snap, throwing the play out of rhythm, and kept at left tackle for three yards. After a five-yard gain by Harrison put the ball at the 2, another mistake resulted in Jackson keeping the ball for a three-yard loss.

“We had a couple of busts,” Perry said. “A couple of young guys went the wrong way. That happens. We’ve just got to eliminate those errors.”

Harrison’s 27-yard field goal attempt was wide left, swinging the momentum back to the Eagles. After an option pitch to Moore at left end gained a yard, Clark kept at tackle and took matters into his own hands.

“We saw what they were doing so we tried to go outside,” Clark said. “We saw that wasn’t going to work so we pounded it inside.”

Miller McCarthy led the ACA defense with 12 tackles, followed by Jack Thomas with nine tackles and a sack and Otasowie Dion with five tackles. More importantly, it left the Eagles as the only unbeaten team in the region as Dale County, St. James, Straughn and Geneva are a game back at 2-1.

“It’s as big as a regular season win gets, if we do the things we need to do over the course of the next four weeks,” Sanford said. “But the gravity of the moment is not lost on us.”

Alabama Christian has never won a region championship since the Alabama High School Athletic Association switched from the smaller areas to larger regions in 2000. The last title for the Eagles was an area championship in 1992. Now, despite an uncertain season that can be sidetracked at any moment by coronavirus, the opportunity to move the game from Sept. 4 to avoid a forfeit because of coronavirus issues resulted in the most exciting game of the season that put ACA in the driver’s seat in Region 2.

“That’s one of the most incredible games I’ve been involved with as a coach,” Sanford said. “It really is too bad that one team has to not win. They came back from 19 points down and our kids had to fight and dig deep in the second half. We had some key injuries that really would have made a difference for us and they were missing their best defensive player (linebacker Dalton Washington).”  

ACA (4-1) returns home next Friday to host Ashford in a region game. St. James (3-2) travels to Tuskegee to play Booker T. Washington.