White Plains gets first win
- Updated: September 27, 2014
The remnants of his celebratory encounter with the water cooler lay before White Plains football coach Larry Strain in the closing minutes of Friday night’s victory. In the cover photo, the players chase down Strain to take part in the tradition.
By Al Muskewitz
East Alabama Sports Today
WHITE PLAINS — Larry Strain stood near midfield talking about the events of the night and reflecting on all it has taken to get there. He was wet and a little chilly in the night air.
But he was happy.
And so was everybody at Robertson Field Friday night — at least those on the White Plains side who within minutes had emptied onto the field with the coach.
The Wildcats earned their first win under their new coach with an offensive outburst that threatened the school record, 49-28 over Pleasant Valley.
“This is great,” freshman quarterback Drew Hudson said. “Winning is so fun. You can’t describe the feeling until it happens.”
Strain can describe the feeling, having won 100 games at Woodland before leaving to take a program that hadn’t had a winning season in 11 years or a playoff berth in 20, and in this instance he’d call it cold. He was standing on the field wet and cold because his players doused him with the water bucket in the final minute of play.
He was set up, of course.
“The coaches wanted us to celebrate our first win with coach Strain and they wanted to make him happy,” lineman Cade Shaw said. “(Assistant coach Jeff Napier) came to us with two minutes left and said when there was 30 seconds left in the game throw the ice on him.”
So, as the clock was winding down, seniors Shaw, Nathan Gilbert, Landon Austin, Dillon Greenwood, Ryan Hanson and Kameron Cleveland all made their way behind the bench to the water cooler, snuck around the far end of the players and ambushed their coach.
They had to chase him down, in spite of the best efforts of other assistants trying to keep him from getting away.
“It was awfully cool,” Strain said. “I suspected it was coming. At Woodland if you win, you’re gonna get wet. Tonight, I turned around and seen it (coming).
“You always want to get to that point. You always want to get wet during the game. You want your kids to be excited. Sure, you don’t like that initial dump of the water believe me because it is pretty shocking when it first hits you.”
But perhaps not as shocking as the offensive fireworks the Wildcats (1-4) put forth in this game.
They had scored only 27 points in their previous four games, but they put up 29 in the first half Friday. They scored 35 unanswered points after the Raiders (1-4) took a 28-14 lead with 3:49 left in the second quarter.
Lawrence Jackson scored four touchdowns and Hudson threw three touchdown passes. Jackson, a junior released only Monday from a triceps injury that kept him out of the previous week’s game and playing running back for the first time, rushed for 134 yards and caught two passes for 30 more.
He scored on runs 13, 17 and 65 yards and caught a 32-yard touchdown pass from Hudson.
“We knew I was one of the key players and they put me in the game plan to give me the ball more and we executed,” Jackson said. “We just played hard, fought and played as a team. It feels good to put points on the board like we did.”
White Plains running back Lawrence Jackson (8) talks with coaches in the press box after his big game. He is flanked by teammate Zachary Gissendanner and assistant coach Blake Snider.
Both teams got in the act. PV’s Drew Lewiski rushed for 233 yards and two touchdowns and passed for another score. Dalton Bean rushed for 116 yards and a score.
In all, there were 11 touchdowns, 46 first downs, and 920 yards of net offense between the teams. In one wild stretch of the second quarter when the Wildcats rallied from 15 points down to take a 29-28 halftime lead, there were five touchdowns in the final 4:40 and four scored in less than two minutes.
The Wildcats were in striking distance of scoring another touchdown that would have broken the school record for points in a game – 54 in a 1980 win over ASD — but Strain shut it down. They put 50 on Susan Moore in the next to last game last season.
“The satisfying part was seeing the reaction of my kids,” Strain said. “They had to buy into something that they weren’t real sure could happen. They had to step out on faith and each week I had to keep encouraging them, pressing the issue. When you get beat 50-7 and 55-6 (their last two losses), you’ve gotta have a lot of faith.
“Up to this week I had a base offense … (but) we didn’t understand the concept of what we trying to do. It took us to this point to understand what we’re supposed to be doing on any given play.”
And this week they expanded the offense to a “huge degree.” There were 31 new plays on the master play sheet and Strain called “a bunch of them” against the Raiders.
For all the offense in the game, there was a defensive element to the win. The Wildcats scrapped everything they were doing on defense at halftime, went to a whole new approach for their linemen and outside linebackers, and shut out the Raiders in the second half.
Pleasant Valley’s Drew Lewiski (14) looks for running room against White Plains.
THE YARDSTICK
Category PV WP
First downs 23 23
Rushes-yds 364 246
C-A-I 4-9-1 11-21-0
Passing yds 59 251
Fumbles-lost 1-1 2-0
Punts-avg 2-25.5 2-40.5
Penalties-yds 12-115 9-95
Pleasant Valley (1-4) 7 21 0 0 — 28
White Plains (1-4) 6 23 14 6 — 49
WP – Lawrence Jackson 13 run (kick failed)
PV – Dakota Jones 13 pass from Drew Lewiski (Dalton Bean kick)
PV – Bean 5 run (Bean kick)
PV – Lewiski 1 run (Bean kick)
WP – Jackson 17 run (Jackson run)
PV – Lewiski 60 run (Bean kick)
WP – Caleb Turner 1 run (Jackson run)
WP – Nathan Gilbert 5 pass from Drew Hudson (Hudson kick)
WP – Dillon Greenwood 35 pass from Hudson (run failed)
WP – Jackson 65 run (Turner run)
WP – Jackson 32 pass from Hudson (run failed)
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