The season comes down to two games for the White Hall Bulldogs, who in two weeks have experienced the yin and the yang of high school football.
A close loss to rivals Watson Chapel on Oct. 14 left his players so low, Head Coach Mike Vaughn said it took them four days “to get back to even.”
Both teams entered the game undefeated, and with the loss the Bulldogs saw a shot at a 5A-South title start to slip through their fingers.
Then Friday came, and White Hall blew out Hot Springs 44-9. Improbably, the 2-5 Panthers of Magnolia leapt up and bit Watson Chapel 21-14 for the Wildcats’ first loss of the season, and first conference loss.
Game on.
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“It puts us back in the hunt for a conference championship,” Vaughn said. “If we could win a couple of games we could at least be conference co-champions. That in itself excited our seniors a great deal.”
This week calls for a different kind of “even.”
The Bulldogs (7-1, 4-1) travel to winless Hope (0-8, 0-5) tonight with championship dreams alive. Yet if the experience of their rivals, who traveled over 100 miles to lose to Magnolia, is any guide, the two-hour, 117-mile trip to Hope could be treacherous.
The Bulldogs have been practicing all week to defend the Bobcats’ passing attack. Vaughn said the Bobcats passed 63 times Friday in a 42-21 loss to Camden Fairview, and “probably dropped 10 or 12.”
“If they have one of those nights where they catch everything, Lord knows what could happen,” he said. “We’re concerned, our kids are concerned.”
It’s a different challenge from the one the Bulldogs faced last week from Hot Springs, who sought to compensate for a lack of speed by leaning on a size advantage.
An early turnover by Hot Springs and several Bulldogs touchdowns put White Hall ahead, and the Bulldogs choked off the game behind a solid rushing attack and an athletic defense.
“Our kids played well, played hard, thought they came back and played with a lot of enthusiasm and energy,” Vaughn said.
Getting up early and leaning on the running game is the plan once again, but after the last two weeks, Vaughn isn’t taking anything for granted.
“We can’t go down there with anything but our ‘A’ game,” he said.