5. Winning streaks continue
West Rowan won its 46 straight game.
Photo by Charles Ward
West Rowan (Mt. Ulla, N.C.), Phoebus (Hampton, Va.), Alcoa (Tenn.), Hamilton (Chandler, Ariz.) and Mullen (Denver, Colo.) all continued long football win streaks with championship seasons.
West Rowan won its national-best 46 straight game with a 34-7 win over Eastern Alamance (Mebane) for the Class 3-A state championship as Dinkin Miller ran for 211 yards on 22 carries and its defense gave up minus-one yard of offense in the second half.
Phoebus (Hampton, Va.), ranked No. 10 in the final Xcellent 25 presented by the Army National Guard, made it three consecutive Group AAA Division 5 state titles and 45 straight wins overall with a 36-17 win over Stone Bridge. Senior tailback Tyree Lee rushed for 189 yards and three touchdowns on 28 carries and Breon Key had an 86-yard interception return for a touchdown with 11:01 left in the game.
Alcoa (Tenn.) won its seventh straight and 12th Tennessee 3A title with a 56-14 win over Goodpasture Christian. Led by All-State performers Taharin Tyson, Steven Isom, J.T. Rankin, Derek Evans, Darrell Warren and Tustin Tallant, Alcoa has won 43 straight games.
Phoebus makes it 45 straight.
Photo by Clarence Thomas
Hamilton won its 40th straight game and third straight Arizona 5A Division I
crown with a 21-13 win over
Desert Ridge (Mesa) at University of Phoenix Stadium. Hamilton, which finished No. 21 in the final MaxPreps Xcellent 25 national rankings, became the first large division school to win three straight crowns.
Mullen routed previously unbeaten Regis Jesuit (Aurora, Colo.), 37-6, before a crowd of 15,257 to win its third consecutive Class 5A state title and extend its winning streak to 33 games. The Mustangs outscored their 14 opponents by a huge 517-89 margin and are being viewed as one of the state's best-ever teams.
Then there is Butler, with a 31-game win streak of its own.
Butler (Matthews, N.C.) won its second straight 4-AA championship season in convincing fashion with
a 44-0 win over Wake Forest (Rolesville) in the championship game. The Bulldogs (16-0) forced six turnovers and MVP
Jahwan Edwards ran for 126 yards and three touchdowns in the second half.
Butler finished 16-0 and No. 17 in the final MaxPreps Xcellent 25 national rankings, which didn't seem likely after National Junior of the Year Christian LeMay, a Georgia-bound quarterback who threw for 3,291 yards, 44 TDs and just two INTs last year, decided to sit out the 2010 season — as did 1,500-yard rusher Ron Howard.
Riley Ferguson of Butler.
Photo by Charles Ward
Then during the season, star running back
Deion Walker (23 TDs) left the team after being involved in a fatal accident, and a standout linebacker was forced to miss a month after being charged with a serious crime (he has since been cleared).
"It's been a wild ride for us the whole season, and this just tops it off," Bulldogs coach Mike Newsome told MaxPreps correspondent Harold Gutmann after the game. "It's so much sweeter to watch these kids go through the adversity we had to go through, and have those guys in our hearts that aren't with us today.
"A lot of people could have folded the tent a long time ago, and these guys stuck with it and stepped up when they needed to step up. They're just resilient. They're going to learn important life lessons having to go through all this stuff, and I hope that's what we're teaching them more than just winning championships."
