CALEDONIA — Skying off the goal line, Caledonia defensive back Kewon Wyatt watched the pass slide into his gloves before hitting the ground.
Racing to his left, Wyatt leapt in front of a floated pass from New Hope quarterback Ty Crowell to close out a dramatic first half between the cross-county rivals Friday night.
“He prepares every day, so it’s no surprise when he makes plays out here on the field,” Caledonia head coach Michael Kelly said.
While offense was limited through the game’s first 24 minutes before JV players entered, Wyatt’s double duty at running back and defensive back helped Caledonia during a rough and rugged affair. Trudging up and down the muddied field in Caledonia, Wyatt sidestepped outside, turned to the corner, hit the second level and sidestepped once more for a run of more than 30 yards — the game’s first major play early in the second quarter.
Stopped short on third down, Wyatt’s run set up an errant snap by the New Hope special teams unit that skirted out of the back of the end zone for a safety.
Riding the arm of Crowell, the Trojans responded with a scoring drive of more than five minutes. Taking the snap to his right at the Caledonia two yard line, Crowell plunged his way through the Caledonia defensive line for the game’s first touchdown with 4:15 remaining in the second quarter.
Striking quicker than the lightning that danced through the night over toward West Alabama, Caledonia quarterback Zack Gorum flipped his second snap of the game to up-back Darius Triplett two plays later. Slicing into the open field, Triplett dashed past the New Hope bench and into the front right corner of the end zone for a go-ahead 75-yard touchdown as the clock inched toward three minutes left in the contest.
With one final drive, Crowell hit Dearies Smith in stride for what looked to be the winning score with just over 40 seconds remaining, but a blindside block penalty negated the pass.
Dancing through the Caledonia defense for a desperation scramble on fourth-and-15, Crowell’s final pass of the first half was poetically picked off by Wyatt on the goal line with 22 seconds left.
“He’s just grown up a lot from being a 15-year-old to a 16-year-old,” New Hope coach Wade Tackett said of Crowell’s performance.
New Hope added seven points in the third quarter and eight in the fourth. Caledonia’s junior varsity players took over at the start of the game’s second half, while New Hope’s JV squad entered later in the third quarter.
While both offenses found their footing in the latter stages of Friday’s second quarter, the contest was marred by penalties. In the first two quarters, the teams combined for four unsportsmanlike conduct penalties coupled with a slew of other calls. And while there were issues to clean up ahead of season openers at Houston and on the road against Amory for New Hope and Caledonia, respectively, Tackett felt Friday night’s scrimmage meant more than just football amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It means more right now,” he said. “Football means as much as it did in 2001. Right now the country needs it; this community needs it; this county needs it. So we felt it’d be good to give back to the community with this game.”
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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