High School Football: Cougars Want to Rule It All – Salisbury Post

Mike London

[email protected]

GRANITE QUARRY — The MaxPreps stats page for Friday’s Southern Piedmont Conference football game still shows “Carson did not enter passing stats” and “Carson did not enter receiving stats.”

MaxPreps will still be waiting to input these statistics in 50 years. Carson had zero passing yards Friday, but the Cougars scored six touchdowns and beat East Rowan 42-28.

Carson’s season is on life support, but the Cougars are holding on. The loss to Concord does sting, but the 3A playoffs are not out of the question if the Cougars (3-5, 1-4) can beat Central Cabarrus and South Rowan in the next two weeks. It’s doable. It’s not the same as beating Robinson and Northwest Cabarrus.

Carson’s stats Friday looked like something out of the 1950s, when teams ran single-wing offenses and let out sweat, blood and guts with every snap. Bill Ludwig would be proud of this stat sheet. Run-Run-Run coach Joe Pinyan, who was at East Stadium on Friday, would have been very pleased with that statistic.

Carson threw three incompletions against East, so those bad things that can happen when you throw never materialized. On the other hand, Carson ran the ball 53 times for 435 yards. The most rushing yards recorded by the Post for a Carson team was 460 yards against South Rowan in 2010.

“I have to give credit to (assistant) Zach Overcash for the game plan,” Carson head coach Jonathan Lowe said. “He’s been telling me all week that we have to play against East and we were getting Simeon Parker, one of our best players, back from injury. Parker is a tight end and defensive end. Being able to line him up at tight end is like having a sixth offensive lineman there. So we went old school. We went to break the mouth. We ran the ball over and over and our kids converted.”

Carson kept things simple, reduced the risks, and the offensive linemen and defensive backs responded with 8 yards per carry. Freshman Damon Broussard had a tremendous game with 17 carries for 174 yards and three touchdowns. He more than doubled his scoring total for the season.

Rozan Perkins carried 16 times for 116 yards and a touchdown. Quarterback Trip Marcum had 10 carries for 73 yards and two touchdowns. Quarterback Griffin Barber made the right reads and throws on many plays and added 62 yards of his own.

“He had a good understanding of the Eastern front,” Lowe said. “And we have some very good young defensemen.”

Everyone agreed that the biggest play was Broussard’s 47-yard touchdown run on the sideline with 11 seconds left in the first half. Instead of leading 20–14 at halftime, Carson had a two-touchdown lead.

East (0-8, 0-5) continued to fight in the second half but were unable to get the stops they needed to make up ground.

On the plus side, the Mustangs had their best offensive performance of the season.

Will Klinger threw for 174 yards and two touchdowns, and Nathan Chisholm and Jayden Reed caught a touchdown. Reed’s score came in the final seconds of the game.

The East showed decent results. Sam Blackwelder and Caleb Whites scored rushing touchdowns.

“We play a little better there,” East head coach Brian Flynn said.

East will take some hope into Friday’s game against South Rowan. Carson will prepare for a must-win game against a Central Cabarrus team that is struggling but has the horses.

“We still have questions to answer on our defense,” said Lowe, a former Mustang player who enjoyed returning to the field that shaped him. “We gave up the most points that East scored.”