By Zachary Harmuth
On a cold Friday night with off and on rain, BA had hoped to be the first team ever to beat Ensworth twice in one season.
Instead, with a berth in AA Division II high school football state championship up for grabs, BA lost 21-12 and could not take advantage of pEnsworth enalty yards and a 5-point half-time lead.
But the two halves of this game told very different stories.
In the first half the BA defense bent, allowing Ensworth just 140 first half yards, while the offense put up 199 yards, mostly through the air.
Tanner Priest caught 3 balls for 79 yards and a 17-yard TD before the half, but BA missed the extra point. Senior quarterback Tyler Swafford threw for 225 yards in the game, 176 in the first half alone, and led BA on drives ending in the Priest TD and two field goals.
On D, the Eagles held Ensworth to a touchdown, which running back D’Andre Ferby scored to cap the game-opening drive. Aside from his 77 first half rushing yards, for the most part BA slowed the nigh-unstoppable Tiger run game.
And then, the second half started.
Where BA had been hot it cooled; and where its defense bent it broke. Drives stalled, passes fell too long or short and the defense could not hold.
Twelve points was never going to be enough to get past Ensworth. And in this kind of grind-it-out game, one big play can determine everything.
In the second half, Ensworth produced just such a big play, to which BA never answered.
Halfway through the third quarter Ensworth faced a third-and-long deep in its own territory when Kiambu Fentress took a Coleman Goodwin pass 73 yards up the sideline for the first points of the second half and retook the lead for Ensworth, 14-12.
The feeling of the game just seemed to change after the play. The Ensworth crowd came to life with vuvuzelas and cowbells, sounding more like a college than high school crowd. Where before that play it felt like BA firmly held control of the game, after it something seemed to have taken a toll on the Eagles, be it the cold or the rain or just the raw size and power of Ensworth.
BA never really recovered.
After a BA punt and another Ensworth drive ending in a score, BA took the ball with less than six minutes left in the game down by 9 points.
This was a last-chance drive, and BA needed to score or go home. Swafford looked deep and threw deep but an Ensworth safety fought past the intended receiver and intercepted the pass.
That was really about all she wrote. Just a night when, on a slow, muddy field, power beat speed.
