Area football teams finish season with playoff appearances
The last two football seasons have been about as impressive as it gets for the three biggest high schools in northeast Jefferson County.
In early December, Pinson Valley claimed its second straight Class 6A state championship, the only two in the school’s history. Hewitt-Trussville advanced to the second round of the 7A playoffs again, and the only thing standing in the way of Clay-Chalkville was that pesky Pinson team.
Pinson Valley capped off its Hollywood-worthy story on Dec. 7, when the Indians knocked off Saraland 26-17 to claim the 6A title. The Indians led for much of the contest, but Saraland closed the gap to 19-17 early in the final quarter. Kendall Thornton’s interception return for a touchdown with five minutes to play sealed back-to-back championships for the program.
The final iteration of the head coach and quarterback relationship between father and son Patrick and Bo Nix featured a happy ending.
“It’s very humbling as a coach and as a dad,” Patrick Nix said following the championship game.
To make the moment more special, Pinson Valley won the state title on the same field that Patrick Nix once played on as a quarterback at Auburn University. And it’s the same stadium Bo Nix will play in as a quarterback at his dad’s alma mater.
“I will remember this day for the rest of my life,” Bo Nix said. “Doing it here at Auburn is a dream come true.”
Bo Nix completed 25-of-35 passes that night for 306 yards and two touchdowns to put the cap on a scintillating high school career. He became the state’s all-time leader in total offense, surpassing 12,000 yards in a career that dates back to his days as an eighth-grader starting at Scottsboro High.
One of his three touchdown passes was an 83-yard one to Geordon Pollard, who made the most of his only high school football season. The senior fell short in three previous basketball seasons but came out on top on the gridiron.
“Getting my first TD reception in a championship game, … my coach and teammates believed in me. Without them, I would never have been here or even made it to the locker room,” Pollard said.
Pinson Valley piled up a 28-1 record over the past two seasons, with the only loss coming to 7A power Hoover at the start of this past season.
Of the Indians’ 13 wins in 2018, only three of them were single-digit victories. Outside of Saraland, crosstown rival Clay-Chalkville was the only team that could hang with the Indians, with the scores of their two games being 28-21 and 28-20.
Clay-Chalkville has had an incredible two-year run as well, posting a combined record of 23-5. Unfortunately for the Cougars, four of those losses were at the hands of Pinson Valley, which knocked them off in the 6A semifinals for the second straight season.
Outside of the Pinson contests, Clay put together an outstanding 2018 campaign. The Cougars notched convincing wins over nearly every opponent and took down two 7A schools in James Clemens and Gadsden City. Their offense averaged nearly 40 points per game, while the defense surrendered less than 14 per contest.
Hewitt-Trussville put together consecutive unbeaten regular seasons in 2016 and 2017 while in Region 4, but the Huskies settled back into the tough Region 3 in 2018. The Huskies reacquainted themselves well with the local foes, finishing with an 8-4 record and winning a first-round playoff game for the third straight season.
The Huskies began the season with a tight loss to Cedar Grove (Georgia) but ripped off six straight wins after that, including a 56-28 blowout upset of Hoover on Sept. 14. After three more dominant victories in the following weeks, Mountain Brook knocked off the Huskies on Oct. 12.
Perhaps Hewitt-Trussville’s most memorable game of the year came on Oct. 26 in front of a national television audience, as Thompson ended up with a 63-49 win in a game that pitted Alabama quarterback commits Paul Tyson (Hewitt) and Taulia Tagovailoa (Thompson) against each other. The Huskies held a 28-0 lead early in that contest, but Thompson eliminated the deficit to spark a second-half shootout.
Hewitt won a thrilling game over James Clemens 43-41 on Nov. 9 and fell to Thompson 37-13 in the second round the following week.
Bo Nix, Tyson and Clay-Chalkville’s Willie Miller have been the starting quarterbacks for the last two seasons (three in Miller’s case), so all three teams will be looking for a new signal-caller this offseason. It’ll be hard to top this two-year run for whoever follows at each school.