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Spain Park football coach Shawn Raney made sure his halftime message was clear as his team huddled inside the visiting locker room at the Hoover Met on Thursday night.
“I told the kids at halftime (that) you’re fixing to see a barrage like you’ve never seen from the Hoover kids,” said Raney, whose team led by 10 points at the time. “They were fixing to come at us.”
But a funny thing happened on a night when Hoover, the state’s top-ranked 7A team, looked to extend an in-state winning streak to 44 games and beat its crosstown rival for the 14th consecutive time on the field.
Simply put, the barrage never came. Instead, the Spain Park defense threw up a cement wall, the Jaguars’ offense did enough to pad its lead by a touchdown and Hoover had several moments of self-destruction. Put that all together and No. 8 Spain Park no longer has a zero in the win column against the Bucs following a 17-0 Jaguar Class 7A, Region 3 victory on a blustery evening.
The postgame scene was about what you’d expect from a streak-busting victory. Raney failed to dodge a postgame cold water bath from his players, students rushed the field to celebrate and one side of the goal post toppled to the ground before security was able to chase the fans away.
On the other side, the Hoover players sang the fight song before quietly heading to the locker room. Head coach Josh Niblett praised the Jaguars (5-1 overall, 4-0 region) for the win and didn’t dodge the reason his team now must begin a new in-state win streak.
“They won the battle up front,” Niblett said. “You (lose) the battle up front, I don’t care who you are, you’re not going to have a very good chance to be successful.”
Spain Park rushed for just 113 yards on 44 carries, which is less than 3 yards per carry, but there were some important times of the game when running backs Larry Wooden and Wade Streeter controlled the tempo. Wooden finished with 74 yards on 19 carries and Streeter had 46 yards on 22 carries.
Defensively, the Jaguar's front seven, led by defensive linemen Jonah Tibbs and Damon Wright and linebacker Perry Young, dominated for much of the game and helped hand Hoover its first shutout loss since losing to Hewitt-Trussville, 13-0, on Sept. 27, 1991. Hoover (5-1, 3-1) never really got its run game untracked – gaining 100 yards on 29 carries – and the Jaguars didn’t allow quarterback Christopher Vacarella to make big plays with his feet.
“The thing (Vacarella) does is he’ll scramble to get receivers open down the field,” Raney said. “What we stressed a lot during the week was to stay in coverage and let the front guys try to handle him. I think we did that.”
Wide receiver Jimmie Johnson (seven catches for 94 yards) and running back Vonte Brackett (eight carries for 80 yards) were the lone offensive bright spots for Hoover.
The difference in the first half was the way each team ended its most promising drives. Spain Park had a pair of long drives before halftime with each one concluding with points. Hoover’s first half drives included a missed 38-yard field goal and failure to convert fourth-and-1 from the Spain Park 19-yard line when Wright wrapped up C.J. Sturdivant for a 2-yard loss.
The Jaguars took the lead on their opening possession when a 14-play, 73-yard drive ended with a 22-yard Crosby Gray field goal that hit the crossbar before tumbling through. Their next scoring drive came on the final possession of the half when the Jaguars largely kept the ball on the ground during a 10-play, 79-yard drive that ended with a 6-yard scoring run by Wooden. The Jaguars ran the ball nine times during the drive and were aided by 20 yards of Hoover penalties.
Hoover forced a three-and-out on the opening possession of the second half but muffed the ensuing punt. Bryan Sanderson recovered the loose ball and Jaguars struck on the next play when quarterback Joey Beatty hit a wide open Will Greene for a 40-yard touchdown.
The Spain Park defense never really let the Bucs recover. Afterward, both coaches took time to glance ahead.
“We’ll figure out what we need to do and we’ll get to where we need to be,” Niblett said. “I think the biggest things with our kids, it’s going to hurt. It’s supposed to hurt and we want it to hurt for a little bit. Then we’ll put in the rearview mirror.”
So where does Spain Park go from here?
“Just keep getting better, man,” Raney said. “Next week we’ll face a Vestavia team, they’ll be just like this. We just got to remember what got us here and continue to work and continue to get better.”
