JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Verlon Dorminey emphasized to his Trinity Christian football team that they had to finish off games against good opponents, with no second-half lapses.
It was very, very late in Friday’s game when his message was taken to heart.
The host Conquerors almost allowed a 21-point lead to slip away in the final three minutes. Columbia scored twice and was driving for a third touchdown when Trinity’s Je’Tye Flornoy stepped in front of a pass in the end zone for the game-sealing interception with three seconds remaining.
That allowed Trinity to escape with a 21-14 victory in the Varsity 4 Game of the Week.
“All week long, we talk about finishing a ballgame,” said Dorminey, in his 34th year as the Conquerors head coach. “We kept telling them all night that, ‘Fellas, 21-0 doesn’t mean nothing. We’ve got to finish, we’ve got to finish.’ Dadgum it, it was close.”
The start was fine. Trinity (3-2) broke through with three touchdowns during the final six minutes of the second quarter, including a 67-yard pick-six by Tre Williams.
But the finish was dicey. The Tigers broke through with 2:43 left in the game when Zamarion Jones hit Brandon Lovett on a crossing route around the 36-yard line, and Lovett slipped a pair of tackles on the way to a 47-yard touchdown.
That launched a strange chain of events. The Conquerors were penalized twice, including being offside on an onside kick they recovered, setting up Columbia for an onside recovery at Trinity’s 28. Just a couple of plays later, Bynton Edge was on the receiving end of an 8-yard touchdown pass.
The second, more controversial, onside attempt followed. It appeared the Tigers, definitely in Dorminey’s eyes, touched the kick before it went 10 yards. But the referees picked up a flag, and Columbia took over at its 44. After nine plays and a delay of game on the Tigers, they were 15 yards from the end zone with 12.5 seconds left.
Jones scrambled away from the rush to his right and fired toward the middle of the field. But Flornoy, at first drifting with Jones, broke back toward the middle and grabbed the interception.
“We were in Cover 4 the whole game and they would roll out one way and then throw it back the other,” Flornoy said. “I read it earlier (in the second quarter) but missed getting (the pick).”
That helped kick aside memories of second-half meltdowns earlier in the season. The Conquerors trailed by 10 against Bolles in the second half, but an underthrown ball on a deep route led to an interception for Bolles and snowballed into a 41-10 rout. Trinity led by a touchdown in the second half at Raines before the Vikings took over that game.
That’s life with a young team. Trinity started three seniors on offense and four on defense.
“Young doesn’t mean anything to us,” said Flornoy, a junior. “We’re all confident, and we’re confident in each other to win the game. The coaches put a lot of trust in us.”
The quarterback tandem is a sophomore-freshman duo featuring Hicks Zarah, who rushed for a score, and Terel Dallas, who threw for one. The starting offensive line has three sophomores and two juniors. Zarah and Dallas handed the ball off to a sophomore and an eighth-grader and threw to a pair of sophomores, a freshman and two seniors.
Williams, who had two receptions on offense to go with his interception on defense, is a freshman.
“It’s just a learning experience,” Dorminey said. “They’re going to be great because they’re all really great athletes. It’s that development process because, instead of playing JV football, on Friday night, they’re playing varsity football. Playing older kids, day in, down out.”
There was some regret mixed with pride on the other side. On Columbia’s first five trips into Trinity territory, the Tigers didn’t score a point, with three failed fourth downs, a punt and the Williams pick six.
The Tigers had 104 yards of total offense heading into the final quarter, with 77 rushing yards coming from Jerome Horne.
“Look back to the first quarter, we moved the ball but were not able to finish at the end,” Columbia coach Brian Allen said. “Our defense played shutout ball in the second half, and they played outstanding football in the first half. A 14-point half to this team is good. This team had Raines on its heels at their place.”
But the Tigers’ rally attempt, with Jones throwing for 125 of his 151 passing yards in the final quarter, at least gave something for the team to take back, even though Columbia fell yet again to a quality opponent after losing to Georgia power Coffee and then falling to Madison County earlier in the season.
“Proud of my group for the resiliency to finish,” Allen said. “That’s something we really emphasize and harp on a lot in our program.
“You have to make the kids believe the second half is theirs, whatever the score is. Our kids believe. It feels good we had a shot. You feel a lot better on the ride back knowing we had a shot on that last play. I’m proud of my guys.”
Trinity Christian 21, Columbia 14
Columbia, 0, 0, 0, 14 —14
Trinity Christian, 0, 21, 0, 0 — 21
TC – David Wright 12 pass from Terel Dallas (Joel Haney kick)
TC – Tre Williams 67 INT return (Haney kick)
TC – Hicks Zarah 1 run (Haney kick)
C – Brandon Lovett 47 pass from Zamarion Jones (Mathan Cook kick)
C – Bynton Edge 8 pass from Jones (Cook kick)
Category: C — TC
First downs: 12 — 11
Rushes-yards: 30-100 — 24-38
Passing: 152 — 164
Comp-Att-Int: 14-29-2 — 11-16-0
Fumbles-lost: 0-0 — 0-0
Penalties-Yards: 7-47 — 11-90
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING — C: Jerome Horne 14-79, Jones 14-16, Jonathan Andrews 1-4, Kyren Caldwell 1-1. TC: Dallas 6-18, Zarah 6-16, Marquez Hicks 1-7, Romeral Hawkins 1-6, Williams 1-1, Micah Anderson 3-0, Team 1-(-1), Cedrick McNeil 5-(-9).
PASSING — C: Jones 13-28-2-151, Joel Glover 1-1-0-1. TC: Zarah 7-10-0-127, Dallas 4-6-0-37.
RECEIVING — C: Caldwell 6-61, Lovett 1-49, Edge 3-31, Antonio Days 1-5, Horne 2-4, Aaron Holmes 1-2. TC: Hicks 4-71, Lenox Hires 3-39, Williams 2-35, Wright 1-12, Hawkins 1-7.