Four days after Burke County football almost pulled off a comeback and upset win for the ages against No. 1 Benedictine, Bear Nation is still buzzing.
Its fans are still taking to social media and expressing their pride in what Burke County did — or almost did. And rightfully so.
Coach Franklin Stephens’ young, injury-riddled squad went into the halftime locker room down 31-7, and came back out in the third quarter to out-duel Class AAAA’s best team 23-7 in the second half during Burke County’s 8-point loss.
Sure, there was disappointment in the loss. But no one in Waynesboro, including the Bears’ players and coaches themselves, were seen hanging their heads.
That’s because the near-upset loss showed Stephens and company that Burke County isn’t as far away from challenging for another state championship as some may believe.
“It’s been a minute before we beat those guys,” Stephens said. “Give Coach Brit credit. They’re a good team. They’re the measuring stick in 4A football right now. The key is, somebody’s gonna have to play lights out for four quarters to beat them. And it was good for our guys to get a taste and see what it was about, and it’s no doubt in our mind — I’d be shocked if they’re not in the semifinals or the finals again this year.”
Here’s the kicker, though: Nobody would be shocked, either, to see Burke County right there in the thick of things with the Cadets.
Stephens called Friday’s loss a “grow-up game,” particularly for his diminutive sophomore quarterback Sean Vandiver.
The 5-foot-9, 150-pound signal caller threw for 227 yards and three touchdowns on 9-for-18 passing. Not bad against one of the top defensive units in Georgia. Stephens called it a solid performance for a young player to build upon.
“I thought early in the game, there were a couple of things we’d have liked for him to do a little bit better,” Stephens said. “But in the second half, we he was able to make those throws and our offensive line was able to protect him a little bit better. Overall, you can say he grew up in that game, but he’s been growing up all year. When you’re dealing with a 10th grader, he’s going to make 10th grade mistakes. That’s just part of it.
“But this is probably his biggest game of his life. You’re playing the No. 1 team in the state. His future is still bright. At some point in time, he’s gonna get bigger. We’re gonna get him bigger and stronger, but he showed he’s got some toughness about him.”
Vandiver’s season stats are more than respectable. He’s passed for 943 yards and 11 scores to just four interceptions while completing 56 percent of his passes. He’s also got four rushing touchdowns. Ronderius Gray (421 receiving yards, 21 catches and four touchdowns) is his favorite target in the passing game, while junior tailback Ameree Williams (619 rushing yards and seven touchdowns) helps balance the offense with prowess in the ground game.
The Bears amassed almost 400 total yards of offense — Williams rushed for 138 yards on 13 carries — and the 30 points they scored was the second-highest point production for a Benedictine opponent this season. The previous week, New Hampstead put up 31 in a 39-31 loss to Benedictine.
That’s right — two eight-point squeaker-type wins for the top-ranked Cadets. What does it mean? That even an undefeated, defending state champion isn’t unbeatable. And if Burke County learned nothing else from Friday’s game, it discovered, not only how close it is to that Benedictine level, but also what it takes to get over that hump.
“During the first 24 minutes of that game, I’m not quite sure what we were doing,” Stephens said. “We were just there. I do’t think it was nerves. You know, you look for all kinds of excuses. But at the end of it, we didn’t make plays and we didn’t do what needed to be done against those guys to be successful. You can do those things, and get off to slow starts against other teams, but when you play those guys, you can’t make those mistakes.”
A clear path to No. 2
Burke County (6-1, 1-1) will next face winless Islands on the road, then close out the season at New Hampstead in Savannah (3-3, 1-1) and at home against Southeast Bulloch (4-3, 1-1). Neither of the latter two games will be “gimmies,” but they are also very winnable.
Though they’ll now need to win out and hope for a couple of upsets in order to surpass Benedictine for tops in the region, if Burke County takes care of business in the back half of the region schedule, it will host a first round playoff game, at least.
And it’s games like Friday’s close loss that makes it easy for Stephens to keep his team motivated.
“We’ve still got so much to play for,” he said. “And it was good to see the positives out there, and to see the guys come out and give us a chance to win the game at the end. We were right there. Six minutes to go in the game, and we had two opportunities to win and squandered both of them. I hate that for our guys, but you know, sometimes before you get where you want to go, there’s going to be some growing pains. And we’re just going to look at [Friday night] as growing pains. Lessons learned.
“The key is, where do we go from here? Do we continue to work and climb that ladder to get ourselves better so that we can get in the mix, or is it a situation where we say we’ve had enough of it and we’re satisfied.”
Winning with Burke County talent
Before Friday’s game, when Stephens was asked about who he felt had really stepped up to be contributors to his then-undefeated squad, he paused a beat and then essentially said, “everybody.”
“Some different guys, every week, somebody’s making some plays for us,” he said. “Maybe this week, it’s this guy and another week it’s another guy. It’s not a bad thing. We’ve had some injuries and things like that, which just means some other guys have had opportunities to step up.”
He mentioned receivers Gray and Jensen Bradley in the passing game. Of course leading rusher Williams and then Jeremy Richardson who has become a more-than-capable complement to Williams in the backfield. He talked about Rashad Carter showing up big on defense at his safety position and proven guys like linebacker Brandon Lively who’s 16 total tackles (12 solo) and quarterback sack against Benedictine has pushed him near the century mark in total tackles with three games still remaining.
These are mostly homegrown kids who are being groomed and developed specifically to play Burke County football, which is something that’s becoming more of a rarity even in high school athletics. But Stephens says he takes pride in that, and believes it to be the right approach to build the right kind of winner on and off the field.
“Here at Burke County, we don’t have the ability to go out and get who we want or recruit from hundreds of thousands of people,” Stephens said. “We have who’s in this county, and at the same time, that’s not knocking anybody. Everyone’s got their own things they’ve gotta deal with. But for us, we’re gonna take our guys — we’re going to take what we have — and we’re going to develop them.”
