Harlem and Morgan County will duke it out in Madison, Georgia Friday for a region championship as the final week of the regular season is here in Georgia. At the same time, the first round of the playoffs will begin in South Carolina. Friday’s schedule can be found at the bottom of this column.
But since Monday night, the attention of local high school football observers has been focused on the well-being of Eric Parker, the sixteen-year head coach of Burke County who has long been one of the most highly respected men in the profession. While coaching a rare Monday night game against Wayne County in Jesup, Georgia, Coach Parker collapsed with eight minutes remaining in the second quarter. After on-site medical personnel treated Parker, he was responsive before being taken away from the field in an ambulance. Parker was eventually transported via helicopter to a Savannah hospital, where he has remained in stable condition until the time of this writing.
Before the shock of what happened even had the chance to subside, a stream of positive updates began to come from Parker’s wife, the Burke County Board of Education, his close friends and colleagues, and eventually Parker himself. Days removed from the event we can observe in retrospect the commendable performance, under the most adverse of circumstances, of the players, the coaches and the medical personnel who went on to finish the game.
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How to Proceed?
Anthony Williams, Burke County’s defensive coordinator, joined Parker’s staff in 2009. Williams graduated from the same high school (Mitchell-Baker High in Camilla, Georgia) as Parker. And it was he who stepped into Parker’s role Monday. His first decision was whether the game should even continue.
“When Coach Parker went down and it was brought to my attention how serious it was, the first thing that came to my mind was our kids,” Williams said Tuesday in a phone interview. “The players seeing that and how traumatic it was, the biggest thing was trying to get them refocused. But what helped me do it was the guys that are on this staff. We’ve got a lot of guys with a lot of years of experience so they kind of helped me corral the guys and get them focused.
“But the biggest thing was knowing who Coach Parker is and how much he loves Burke County football. I could just hear him saying, ‘Coach, go ahead and finish that game.’ Because when the refs told us we had two choices, either forfeit it or play it, I knew Coach Parker would not want us to forfeit. So, I met with the staff and I gave them the choices, and everybody was in agreement that we should go finish this thing for Coach Parker.”
Wayne County’s first year head coach Jaybo Shaw spoke reverentially about Parker Tuesday in a phone interview, and he expressed gratitude for the performance of the medical staff who worked to make sure he was in stable condition before taking him from the field. Shaw described the process of resuming the game from the host school’s perspective.
“Before we cleared the field the officials brought Coach (Williams) and me together and we talked about a time period, how long Burke County needed… because obviously at that point it’s all about those kids and what just happened, and Burke County’s staff and the fans, just because of the severity of the situation,” Shaw explained. “Like I said, ball becomes very moot at that point. So we wanted to make sure that we tried to do the very best we could for those kids, for Coach Parker, his family, his staff, his football program… On our end we basically said, ‘you tell us what you guys need as far as time goes.’ It didn’t matter on our end, because we made sure from a Wayne County standpoint that we were gonna do right by Burke County.”
A Pivotal Game
Monday’s game had been a highly anticipated matchup between No. 6 Burke County and No. 9 Wayne County that would decide which team would secure the region’s two-seed and the right to host a playoff game on November 11. When play resumed Wayne County immediately stretched a 3-0 lead to 10-0 with a touchdown on the first drive after the stoppage when Andy Peele connected with Terrione Graves for a 25-yard touchdown pass. On the ensuing drive, Burke County appeared to strike back with a 38-yard touchdown completion from Marshall Flowers to Mason Flukes, but the officials determined that Flukes lost possession of the ball right before he crossed the goal line.
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Wayne County took a 10-0 lead into halftime. It’s understandable that the Bears appeared somewhat out of sorts in the immediate aftermath of what happened to their leader. But Coach Williams received an encouraging message from Burke County athletic director Wade Marchman that helped turn things towards a positive direction for the Bears.
“We still had that lingering feeling,” Williams said. “I think what kind of helped me was that Coach Marchman did get a chance to talk to Coach Parker as we were going into halftime and his last words to Coach Marchman and to me were to tell those guys, ‘Hey, go win this ball game.’
“So, once I heard that and I knew that he was okay, my mind turned to how we could go ahead and get this thing won. Once we did that, our kids got focused. It took a minute for their minds to snap back. But then they fought and fought and fought.”
Fight They Did
The Bears held Wayne County scoreless for the entire third and fourth quarters. But Burke County’s offense produced no points in the third. A 75-yard completion from Flowers to Ronderius Gray yielded nothing after Blake Burden’s field goal attempt was blocked.
But the Bears were able to get on the board with 8:30 left in the fourth quarter when Charlie Dorsey scored on a 35-yard touchdown run to cut the deficit to 10-7. Dorsey rushed 10 times for 103 yards for the game.
After a defensive stop came a 45-yard strike from Flowers, who passed for 241 yards in the game, to Jaylen Golphin that helped the Bears eventually reach the 7-yard line of Wayne County.
But Burke County turned the ball over on downs, and things looked bleak. However, Williams said his players didn’t lose hope because they were able to call on their experience in overcoming second half deficits to earn wins earlier in the season against Thomson, Oconee County and Statesboro.
“That’s one thing that this team has done this year,’ Williams explained. “You go back and look at some of the close games. These guys never stop fighting, they never quit, they never give up. And that’s one thing that they did last night. They fought to the very end.”
When the defense took the field late in the fourth quarter, Wayne County was unable to earn a first down and Burke County’s offense was given one more chance to score from the Wayne County 46-yard line with 57 seconds remaining. After three completions to Flukes, who caught six passes for 88 yards in the game, it was up to Blake Burden to send the game to overtime with a 32-yard field goal.
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Overtime didn’t last long because Wayne County scored a touchdown on their first play and kicked a field goal to take a 17-10 lead. And after Flowers answered with a touchdown run on Burke County’s first play, the Bears were unable to convert for two and the win.
Wayne County prevailed 17-16 to earn the region’s second seed, and Burke County will travel for its first playoff game on November 11. The coaches in charge agreed with me that Monday’s game had no loser in the bigger picture.
“On top of everything that transpired and happened last night I was so proud,” said Williams Tuesday. “Those were my words to them at the end of the game. Man, I was so proud of them for how they responded and with everything that was going on they had every opportunity to just mail it in but they didn’t do it. They fought, and in the overtime we had a chance to win it.”
Shaw was gracious in victory:
“I just want to give so much credit to that coaching staff because I can’t even imagine what they had to go through last night in getting their team ready to play,” Shaw explained. “And the way they came out in the second half, I mean, if that didn’t honor Coach Parker… How they honored Coach Parker after they came out of halftime… and I guarantee you that’s probably what they talked about. Coach Parker would want them to play, and play hard, and finish, and do the things that every one of us knows that Coach Parker stands for as a football coach and as a man. And they did that, and it came down to that last play, which was very fitting. And I just have the utmost respect for Coach Parker, for that Burke County coaching staff, his football team, his community. Just the utmost respect. And the love from Wayne County will continue to pour in and the prayers and thoughts will still be going towards Burke County’s way. I can assure you of that.”
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Friday’s Game Schedule:
Class 3A, Region 4 Championship Game
Harlem at Morgan County
South Carolina High School League (SCHSL) Playoffs
Class 4A
(13) Easley at (4) North Augusta
(10) Greenwood at (7) South Aiken
(11) Midland Valley at (6) Westside
(16) Aiken at (1) Greenville
Class 2A
(4) Bishop England at (1) Barnwell
(5) Chesnee at (1) Strom Thurmond
(5) Mid Carolina at (2) Silver Bluff
(5) Fox Creek at (1) Gray Collegiate
Class 1A
(6) Ware Shoals at (1) Wagener-Salley
(4) Ridge Spring-Monetta at (2) CA Johnson
(5) Blackville-Hilda at (2) Southside Christian
South Carolina Independent School Association (SCISA) Playoffs
(8) Augusta Christian at (1) Hammond
Georgia’s Final Week of the Regular Season
Class 6A, Region 2
Glynn Academy at Lakeside
South Effingham at Evans
Class 5A, Region 1
Bradwell Institute at Greenbrier
Class 4A, Region 3
Burke County at Southeast Bulloch
Class 3A, Region 4
Cross Creek at Hephzibah
Richmond at Salem
Class 2A, Region 4
Westside at Thomson – Thursday
Josey at Butler
Putnam County at Washington County
Glenn Hills at Laney
Class 1A (Division II), Region 8
Warren County at Aquinas
Greene County at Washington-Wilkes
Towns County at Lincoln County
Class 1A (Division I), Region 2
Swainsboro at Dublin
East Laurens at Jefferson County
Georgia Independent Athletic Association (GIAA)
Central Fellowship Christian Academy at Thomas Jefferson
Georgia School for Innovation and Classics at Augusta Prep
Briarwood at Edmund Burke
Georgia 8-Man Football Playoffs
John Hancock at Westminster
Chad Cook is a sports columnist who is known on the field and court as AugBball. Follow him on Instagram @AugBBall
