By Jim Workman
Faced with the fact that he was playing his final football game with his childhood friends, Shawn McKinney wanted to go out with a bang.
Mission accomplished.
McKinney ran for 137 yards and two touchdowns in an emotionally charged senior night performance to lift the Patriots to a 25-8 victory over visiting Wyoming East Thursday night.
One key play of the game came in the third quarter when McKinney converted a fourth-and-1 play for a 64-yard touchdown run.
“I walked over to Shawn and asked him, ‘Can you get it for me?’ and he said ‘Yes,’” said Independence coach Scotty Cuthbert. “I trusted my seniors and he took it to the house. He’s a great football player and a great kid. The injuries early hurt him. He has all-state potential but I don’t know if the games that he lost hurt him. But he’s the real deal.”
“I just popped one out there,” McKinney explained. “Once I broke through the line, it was just a foot race.”
Independence ends its season at 3-7, while Wyoming East falls to 1-8.
Wyoming East took an early lead with 11:26 showing on the second quarter clock when Cory Griffith ran in from 8 yards out and Trey Fralin added a two-point conversion to give the Warriors an 8-0 advantage.
Independence answered with a 6-yard TD run by Adam Whitt, but the Patriots PAT run attempt fell short.
Aaron Hensley picked off a Wyoming East pass on the following possession and took it back 75 yards for a score as time ran out of the first half to give the Patriots a 12-8 halftime lead. The PAT attempt run failed again.
After the long gamebreaking run by McKinney in the third, the Patriots went to the big back again. McKinney scored on an 11-yard TD scamper and Indy punched in a Colton Garris PAT kick to make it 25-8 with 2:35 remaining in the third.
That would give Independence all it would need.
“I think our seniors were so emotional in the first quarter that we got out of our game plan a little,” Cuthbert said. “Once they settled down, they were all right. All my seniors did a great job. I’m really proud of them and I’m glad they got to go out with a win. Hopefully, the underclassmen will learn from it and we can build on it for next year.”
“We put together a real good effort,” McKinney added. “It’s hard. We’ve been playing with each other since we were knee-high. I love all of these guys. We came out all hyped up. We wanted to get one more win for the seniors.
“We came out a lot better in the second half because we knew we had only 24 minutes to play for the rest of our lives. We were determined. No matter what, we were going to come out and win.”
The Patriots, faced with injuries and illness all season, had to scramble with their game plan late Thursday afternoon. Their starting quarterback fell ill suddenly.
“It was kind of a last-minute thing,” explained Cuthbert. “Ricky Cadle was our senior quarterback and he came down with the flu today. I didn’t know it until we got to the field. Jeff Cook (a 5-foot-6 junior wide receiver/backup quarterback) had to go in there under center for us. It was the first time he’s played quarterback for us.”
In a classy move, Indy dropped to a knee on the final play of the game with 17 seconds left and let the remaining seconds tick down and the clock expire, although the Patriots were driving and had the ball first-and-goal at the Wyoming East 1-yard line.
“They’re going through a tough year and we’ve been through it too,” Cuthbert said. “We were trying to win a football game, but one more touchdown wouldn’t have mattered. You don’t step on somebody when they’re down.”
“We had penalties, dropped passes; it’s happened to us all year,” said Wyoming East coach Gary Poindexter. “We put ourselves in a hole in the first half, and we’re too young and inexperienced to dig ourselves out of it.”
Wyoming East had lost its last four games and had been outscored 231-28 in that span. In fact, the Warriors were shut out in the last two weeks 56-0 and 61-0.
Independence had suffered almost the same fate, dropping three straight by being outscored by a combined 99-44.
Wyoming East hosts Liberty next Friday in the final regular season game for both squads. The No. 15 rated Raiders, currently 5-3 with a home game tonight with Shady Spring, are still in the hunt for a spot in the 16-team field of the Class AA playoffs.
“We’re going to be playing a good Liberty team,” Poindexter said. “It’ll be Senior Night for us, so hopefully we can go out on a good note.”
— E-mail:
jworkman@register-herald.com
Independence 25, Wyoming East 8
WE (1-8) 0 8 0 0 — 8
I (3-7) 0 12 13 0 — 25
Second Quarter
WE: Cory Griffith 4 run (Try Fralin run) 11:26
I: Adam Whitt 6 run (run failed) 1:45
I: Aaron Hensley 75 interception return (run failed) 0:00
Third Quarter
I: Shawn McKinney 64 run (run failed) 5:01
I: Mckinney 11 run (Colton Garris kick) 2:35
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING — WE: Fralin 19-83, Griffith 7-38, Team 1-(-16). I: McKinney 17-137, Belcher 13-76, Whitt 8-46, Cook 4-(-22), Mills 1-2.
PASSING — WE: Grogg 12-30-1. I: Cook 3-6-0.
RECEIVING — WE: Fralin 4-34, Bishop 3-36, Schofield 3-21, Lusk 2-41. I: B. Cadle 1-33, Brown 1-21, McKinney 1-(-5).
TURNOVERS — WE: 1. I: 1.
