Montgomery Academy grinds out win over Trinity

By TIM GAYLE

It had the potential to be one of the best small-school matchups in the area this season. And defensively, it was.

Offensively, there was nothing remotely attractive about the performance of Trinity or Montgomery Academy on Friday night at McLemore Field. But first-year MA coach Robert Johnson wasn’t apologizing after his team improved to 2-0 on the heels of beating its two biggest rivals, St. James and Trinity.

“We’re just going to grind it out,” Johnson said. “All of our games are going to look like this. And if we continue to come out on top, I’ll be happy about it.”

The 13-3 victory by Montgomery Academy featured just enough offense at the right moments, if you were a Montgomery Academy fan. If you were a fan of the Wildcats, it was downright agonizing at times, watching a unit with some potential struggle through a sea of inconsistency.

“We got outcoached,” Trinity coach Granger Shook said. “I thought our defense played well enough to win the ballgame. We didn’t make the plays on offense or on special teams. Any time you have eight unforced errors, that is not championship football.”

As Montgomery Academy adjusts from last year’s spread to this year’s wing-T offense under Johnson, as Trinity’s Shook continues to look for more offensive production on a team that has struggled to find big-play potential from its players in recent years, both teams knew there wasn’t going to be a lot of scoring in Friday’s meeting.

For the longest time, it appeared as if the opening drive of the Wildcats would stand as the game winner. Trinity’s offense put together an impressive 15-play mixture of short runs and quick-hitting passes that moved the ball 44 yards in seven minutes to set up a 38-yard field goal by Browder Gulledge with 1:26 remaining in the first quarter. 

At halftime, it was still 3-0 as both teams managed just two first downs in the second quarter. Other than the one Trinity possession, no offense had the ball for more than five consecutive plays in the first half.

After halftime, the game had a different feel. Montgomery Academy, which appeared to be fighting an uphill battle to stay in the game (largely because of the one Trinity drive), came out stronger on both sides of the ball in the second half.  

“We just went in there and showed them what we could do,” Johnson said. “And then our defense just played awesome. They made a big play, then we got the safety. I don’t even know how we ended up kicking the field goal or scoring the touchdown or whatever happened, but it happened.”

The “big play” was Hudson Whitt’s sack of Trinity quarterback John David Bonner that resulted in a 16-yard loss and put the Wildcats back near the goal. Punter Preston Berry, fielding a low snap on fourth down, was jarred loose from the ball. Daniel Scott recovered for the Wildcats, but the result was a safety, leaving Trinity clinging to a 3-2 lead.

Three plays and a punt later, Trinity had the ball back but the Montgomery Academy defense was now setting the tone as Thomas Woodward perfectly read Bonner’s intentions on a pass to Jake Hufham and intercepted the ball at the Trinity 45.

The Montgomery Academy offense, putting together just enough with the help of a pass interference penalty, moved the ball to the Trinity 8-yard line where Jamal Cooper turned upfield on a sweep and crashed into the end zone with 2:30 remaining in the third quarter. Jamal’s brother Jashawn powered into the end zone on the two-point conversion for a 10-3 lead.

Alex Kohn added a 41-yard field goal on the next Eagle possession for the game’s final points.

“They’ve got great, great players,” Johnson said. “Our defense is tough and hopefully they’ll continue to keep playing like this. They got points again tonight after getting points last week. If they continue to do that and shut down the other team’s offense, wow. That’s why we’re going to do what we do on offense, because we know we’ve just got to control the line of scrimmage and we’ll win the game.”

They did control the line of scrimmage. In the second half, Trinity was held to minus 19 rushing yards and 38 total yards, managing just four first downs. For the game, the Wildcats had 30 rushing yards on 30 carries.

Jashawn Cooper, meanwhile, finished with 83 yards on 20 carries.

“Up front, they were more prepared than we were physically, really on both sides of the ball,” Shook said. “Everybody’s going to look at the offense, but the defense didn’t get off the field late in the game.”

For Shook, who has preached physical football since arriving at Trinity in March, an impressive season opener at Alabama Christian didn’t have quite the same luster.

“I think our staff got a false sense of who we were,” he said. “I, as the head coach, let a few things slide and it showed up on Friday. We’ve just got to go back to the drawing board and make sure we outwork our next opponent.”

Trinity (1-1) returns home to play Goshen in a 3A Region 4 opener next week, while Montgomery Academy (2-0) travels to Hale County for a 3A Region 3 opener.

The Eagles are 2-0 for the first time since finishing the regular season undefeated in 2014. It isn’t pretty, but Johnson isn’t complaining.

“We’re going to try to be a nasty, physical team,” he said. “We’ve got all these gorgeous fields around here but we practice on the back forty where it’s muddy and dirty and that’s the way we like it. That’s how we’re going to play football around here.”