Tuesday night's 26th annual Brad King Bowl football contest between the Avery Middle School Panthers and the Cranberry Wildcats was an offensive showcase.The two teams combined for the highest scoring game in Bowl history, lighting up the scoreboard at MacDonald Stadium for a whopping 102 points. Cranberry took the lead first and never surrendered it for the remainder of the evening as they upended the Panthers by the final score of 60-42.
Tuesday's game, the 26th game honoring the memory of former Avery County football player Brad King whose young life was claimed by cancer as a youth, was a showcase for the game's Most Valuable Players in Cranberry's Bryce Pittman and Avery's Chase Buchanan. Pittman scored a game record seven touchdowns in the contest, ranging from 11 yards to 47 yards and also had an interception on defense. The Wildcat running back gained 183 yards on touchdown carries alone. Avery's Buchanan found the end zone on four separate occasions with pass completions from quarterback Chance Watson.
Cranberry led 14-0 after the first quarter of action and 22-6 at halftime. Following the intermission highlighted by performances from the cheerleading squads of both schools, teams resumed play for the second half.Avery cut the lead to 22-12 on its first drive of the third quarter as Watson connected with Buchanan for a five yard screen pass score. Cranberry's Dustin Ruppard added his name to the scoring column with a 12 yard touchdown run. A Jonah Tenge conversion run gave the Wildcats a 30-12 advantage.
The Panthers refused to fold as the Watson/Buchanan combo struck for a 54-yard touchdown strike. A conversion run was successful to reduce the lead to 30-20 at the end of three quarters.
For an already high scoring contest, the offensive fireworks were only beginning. A total of 52 points were scored in the final eight minutes of action. Bryce Pittman saved his best for last, racing for four touchdowns over the final quarter of play. After a 15-yard Pittman scamper to give the Wildcats a 36-20 lead, Avery's Rob Wood took the ensuing kickoff 68 yards for a score to narrow the lead back to one possession at 36-28.
The teams traded scores three additional times in the period before a 42-yard touchdown from Pittman and a Tenge conversion run accounted for the 60th and final points of the evening.Both coaches were proud of their teams for continuing to play hard from the opening kickoff to the final whistle, and they hope the game will serve as a springboard as playoffs begin next week.
"I knew this would be a tough ballgame. This Avery team would be putting the ball in the air, and our pass defense wasn't the best in the world," Cranberry head coach Richard Sheppard said following his team's victory. "Bryce is an exceptional player for us and teams are keying on him, but he keeps running hard. We challenged him before the game to give us a great performance and he did so. Of course he couldn't have had the success without the line up front, and they did a great job opening holes. We look forward to seeing these eighth graders next year in high school. It is a special win to say that Cranberry won the Brad King Bowl, and I'm awfully proud of these kids."
"It was exciting to the end. Both teams played really hard," Avery head coach Donnie Johnson remarked after the game. "This was the best our boys played all season, and I believed they could do this all year. Tonight I think they did a good job, and I don't think they could have played any better than they played tonight. We need to do better defensively, and we made some plays, but they just seemed to outlast us."
The best part of the game Tuesday night was how players and fans were able to support a pair of local families. The Brad Jones family and the Cody Buchanan family have faced difficult medical predicaments, and a total of $2,389 from the game was split between the two families to assist with their ongoing medical expenses.
Cranberry travels to take on Cane River in the first round of the Toe River Conference playoffs next Tuesday, while Avery travels to take on Bowman Middle School.
