North Charleston – After a 1-year hiatus, look who’s back hoisting a championship trophy.
Hilton Head Christian Academy, which had consecutive undefeated seasons winning the SCISA AA state championship in 2020 and 2021, won the AAA state title on Saturday at Charleston Southern University’s Buccaneer Field. The Eagles defeated Wilson Hall 28-6 for their third championship in four years.
“We’ve got a big group of seniors, and they’ve been sound a little bit,” said HHCA head coach Ron Peduzzi, who saw his team win its final 11 games of the season after losing the first two. “They fell short last year and I know that bothered them. I’m very proud of the way they responded this year.”
One of those seniors is quarterback Dylan Clark. He has been the catalyst of the Hilton Head Christian offense the entire season, and he didn’t disappoint on Saturday.
Clark rushed for 123 yards and two touchdowns on 21 carries and used his legs to extend plays that led to big gains both running and throwing the football. He completed 8 of 16 passes for 151 yards and the other two touchdowns.
“This is my last high school football game, and it’s so nice to go out with a win,” said Clark, who was on the ’21 title-winning team. “ I've played football for 12 or 13 years out of my life, and it's so nice to go out of here with a win.”
The Eagles scored on their first offensive possession after forcing the Barons, who finished 10-3, to punt after three plays on the game’s initial offensive series. HHCA started at the WH 47-yard line and needed eight plays to score. Clark scored the touchdown from four yards out with 8:53 left in the first quarter. Junior placekicker Ian Kelly added the extra point to make it 7-0.
That’s what the score would be going into halftime. It didn’t stay that way for long once the third quarter began.
Hilton Head Christian received the second-half kickoff and on the fifth play, Clark got the ball to wide receiver TyShon Mansell, who broke free for a 57-yard touchdown. Kelly’s PAT made it 14-0 with 9:58 still remaining in the third quarter.
Then, on the first play of Wilson Hall’s ensuing drive, running back Miles Van Patten was stripped of the football by HHCA linebacker Bradlee Anderson. The Eagles recovered at the Wilson Hall 16. Clark eventually scored from a yard out to make it 21-0 with 8:04 to go.
“We knew even though we were winning, we weren't playing to the best of our ability,” Clark said. “We knew we needed to get the ball into (Mansell’s) hands and he'd go and do something with it, and that's what he did.
“On defense that strip by Bradlee was huge. It was giving us momentum We were able to score two touchdowns right out of the gate. It was huge.”
A 3-touchdown deficit would be difficult for Wilson Hall to overcome with its run-oriented misdirection style of offense with a healthy roster. With leading rusher Dylan Jones going out for the season early in the first-round playoff win over Northwood and quarterback Clark Kinney playing the game bandaged up and beaten up, it was next to impossible.
“The second half we give up the score and then, boom, we turn it over right there,” said Barons head coach Adam Jarecki. “It was tough for us getting behind three scores and being able to come back.”
The Barons did respond quickly to the third touchdown. Kinney found a wide open Blake VanPatten, who scored on a 61-yard TD pass. The extra point attempt was no good, leaving the score at 21-6 with 7:02 remaining.
Any hope WH had of making a game of it ended on the ensuing series. The Eagles picked up a couple of first downs before facing third down and one yard to go from the Barons 31-yard line. Wilson Hall sold out to stop the run and wide receiver Gage Zatalokin ran right by everyone to catch a TD pass from Clark to make it 28-6 with 3:08 left.
Wilson Hall had a couple of serious scoring opportunities in the first half. On the Barons’ second possession, they were facing second down and two yards to go at the HHCA 11. They could only get one yard on three rushing attempts to turn the ball over on downs after running 15 plays and taking over nine minutes off the clock.
They put together an 11-play drive the next time that got the ball before it stalled at the HHCA 11 after taking six minutes off the clock. Placekicker Jackson Bonser missed a 28-yard field goal.
“The effort was there. We had to be perfect,” Jarecki said. “We kind of knew that going into it.
“We did what we wanted to do on a couple of drives in the first half. We were able to move the ball, but we needed to finish drives. We didn't get points when we moved the ball in the first half. “
Peduzzi was proud of the defensive performance of his team, which lost to Wilson Hall 17-10 in the second game of the season. The Eagles only allowed 110 points in the 11-game winning streak.
“We bent a little bit, but when we needed to make a play on defense we did,” he said. :”Nearly all year long we did that.”
Peduzzi paid credit to the Barons for overcoming major injuries to reach the title game.
“To get here it was a great coaching job on his part,” Peduzzi said of Jarecki, who lost the leading tackler from the last two seasons, junior linebacker Owen Meyers, in the second game of the season and senior 2-way line starter Slade Custer midway through the year. “It was a great job by their players.”
On the game’s final play, Custer and fellow senior Jones were allowed to be on the field in a symbolic gesture.
“I'm proud of the effort,” Jareckis said. "I’m proud of the way they overcame the injuries. It was a super fantastic season.
Kinney completed 13 of 22 passes for 197 yards and the touchdown and ran for 32 yards on 14 carries. Blake VanPatten had six catches for 147 yards. Senior running back Ben Reynolds four catches for 65 yards and ran for 23 yards on seven carries. Miles Van Patten had 38 yards on nine carries.
Mansell had four catches for 83 yards for HHCA while Zatalokin had two catches for 46 yards.
Clark said he and his teammates were able to turn things around by staying true to what they were being taught.
“We just knew those first two games were not our best work,” he said. “We knew we could go out there and do a lot better. We just worked every single week and trusted what the coaches gave us. They put in something new every single week leading us to this game and we were able to adjust. and we got better as the season went on.”
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