By WORTHY EVANS
Columbia - Dutch Fork football underwent a transformation before everyone’s eyes this fall.
The defending 5A state champion Silver Foxes had shown in preseason practices the effect of losing more than 30 seniors from last year, including running back Jarvis Green, who now plays for Clemson.
“To start like we did, it took a lot out of us,” head coach Tom Knotts said. “We missed guys like Jarvis Green, you know. Looking at film last year I thought we were pretty good last year. Nope, it was Jarvis Green that was good, Jarvis Green left, Jarvis Green right, takes it and goes score. So once I realized that, I thought oh Lord we’re missing that threat that Clemson’s got right now.”
They battled, unsuccessfully, to a 2-5 record, their last lost being a 17-14 defeat to Region 4-5A rival White Knoll Oct. 6.
After that game, Dutch Fork all of a sudden became the team that had won seven state championships, and six 5A state championships in the last seven years. The Silver Foxes finished with a 3-1 region record that gave them second place to the champion Timberwolves. They whipped Boiling Springs, got by T.L. Hanna in a clutch road victory, shut down Gaffney at home, and beat J.L. Mann at home on a last-second field goal from Justin Welch to capture the upper state championship.
Appearing in its eighth straight 5A state title game, Dutch Fork faced White Knoll, which under former Silver Foxes assistant Nick Pelham had gone 14-0 in the regular season and playoffs.
At South Carolina State University’s Oliver C. Dawson Stadium Dec. 4, the defensive-minded Timberwolves held a 6-0 lead at halftime, a touchdown and a missed extra point. Perhaps the young Silver Foxes struggled to put things together in the first half, but head coach Tom Knotts and his assistants spoke about the deficit—and that missed extra point—to the team.
“The message at halftime was ‘quarterback, you’ve got to play better. Defense, you’re playing lights-out, keep it up,” Knotts said on the field after the game. “Offense, it’s 6-0. And in our meetings all the time we talk about staying on 7 and 14 and 21. They’re on 6, guys,’ and I saw some lightbulbs come on, you know, ‘they’re on 6.’ We’re going to win this game by a point or more because of that miss, so just hang in there, and you can see them just kind of get visibly lifted.”
Sure enough, Dutch Fork’s first two offensive possessions in the second half resulted in a pair of Jon Hunt touchdown runs, with extra points provided by Jojo Crim.
“That’s what we’re supposed to do,” Knotts said, noting the team’s ineptitude on offense in the first half. “We went down there the first two times (in the first half) and missed a field goal, and did something else goofy down there, something that wasn’t solid football offensively. … Our confidence was a little shaken.”
The Silver Foxes finished off the Timberwolves 21-6 to win the school’s eighth state championship and Coach Knott’s 15th.
“This has got to rank (high),” Knotts said. “The first one was pretty sweet, we’d been knocking at the door for a long time, but I was younger and I barely remember it. But how we started this year with the amount of adversity that there was, we lost players and injuries, we had some attitudes and had to get rid of a couple, but eventually it just started falling into place.”
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