Mississippi Magazine rarely posts Week 9 “Scores and Analysis” because A) everyone is looking forward to Week 10 already and B) it takes extra time to lay-out brackets for our District preview. But it’s very hard to “C” a winning play like Crystal City’s amazing Week 9 kickoff return and not be “D”-lighted to recap it for local folks. So, the formerly low-ranked CCHS can boast of its 2nd featured story of the year.

It helps to grab headlines in a year of football when you make the Play Of The Year to beat a storied rival. Crystal City was supposed to win “22 to 21” in a dramatic finish, according to a blogger who gets such things right every so often. Instead, the Senior Night margin-of-victory for Crystal City was debatably closer than a single point on the scoreboard. In the end, the final score came down to a tantalizing loose ball, an NCAA-level move, and a magnificent 99-yard gallop that might’ve lifted the mood at the Sunken Place for more than just Friday night.

Friday’s audience at CCHS was noisy, no doubt – at least while the Hornets were ringing-up a surprise 20-0 lead in the 2nd quarter. Herculaneum began the scrum in exactly the way TGG thought the Blackcats shouldn’t, busting out a Double-Wing formation and trying brute-force run plays to try to get Lucas Bahr going up the middle. (When are I-55 coaches going to stop trying to turn their best receivers into fullbacks?) Neither team could get a sustained drive going, but exactly as the Magazine feared, visiting signal-caller Jackson Dearing was all out of rhythm in the 1st half, serving up an easy pick-6 to put Crystal City ahead 14-0 just 4:00 into the ballgame.

Herky’s crowd might have roared in the latter half in a game with a different vibe. Dunklin R-5’s half of the bleachers was weirdly 1/2 full, and a lot of the Blackcats’ patrons consisted of teenaged girls with no boys, parents, or student activity leaders to be found around them. It’s AWESOME that dozens of young women from Herky got themselves to the event even as their parents and guy-friends presumably flaked out, and it also bodes well for the development and growth of High School pigskin, a sport that was supposedly “dying off” due to concussion hazards as of a few years ago. (Teenaged boys, it’s safe to say, won’t stop going-out for a sport that girls like watching.) Conversely, though, one could tell that Herky’s student-rooting section didn’t include kids which went out for Cheerleading or Marching Band. They stayed fairly quiet even as CCHS’s momentum slowed to a crawl in midgame.

That’s when Herky started to find its groove, at last adopting a wide formation and making Crystal City’s frosh-filled defense defend the entire field. Dearing began to hit his WRs on consecutive throws, tailback Mike Maloney began to find daylight, and the HHS offense soon drove downfield for what felt like an inexorable TD, closing the gap to 20-14 with just under 7:00 remaining. That’s about when the Sunken Place got very subdued, as an anxious stadium sat on its collective hands while Herculaneum prepared to kick off.

Moments later, the entire Senior Night crowd – including a % of folks from the north end of Commercial Boulevard – was standing, clapping, and cheering like we’d seen Bruno Mars sing with Michael Jackson. Nobody sat down for a while. The play was an instant classic.

It started with what could have been a disaster. CCHS junior Kanden Bolton – the Varsity Hornets’ best player on a night of fine performances – hopped alongside a ragged HHS kick that bounced 15 yards upfield and toward the sideline. HC Dan Fox’s decision-making had already shown that Crystal City did not care about field position so much as preserving the strength of its young defense for a 4th-quarter stand. Therefore, we can’t blame Bolton for not taking a risk and fielding Friday’s fatefully-bounding bean. But the football soon found that dangerous “no man’s land” between the 5-yard line, the host sideline, and the pylon, putting the junior in dire straits on a play that might’ve easily turned into a go-ahead touchdown for the Blackcats.

Bolton’s split-second choices were grim – he could let the ball continue rolling and risk either out-of-bounds on the 2-yard line or a recovery of the free ball – and a kickoff is always a free ball – by a charged-up Herculaneum coverage team. If he attempted to scoop-and-run straight ahead after waiting for so many extra seconds, he would have been swallowed up by HHS tacklers, risking a costly “panic” fumble or a similarly poor spot. Bolton, to make matters worse, had a Blackcat special-teamer bearing down to his left, and another opposing tackler engaging with a Crystal City blocker a few yards in front of him.

Just in the nick of time, the speedster got an idea. Bolton lunged for the now-resting ball without resetting his feet, making Herky think he was about to scoop-up the pigskin and try to run up the middle. With a breathtaking move that belongs on a Saturday highlight reel, Bolton grabbed the egg and shot upfield along the left edge, splitting the HHS defenders easily while Herky’s other coverage men – who’d made the cardinal sin of slowing down to look for the ball – were picked-off and blocked in turn by Crystal’s crew of freshmen. In a flash, Bolton was running at full speed at the 50-yard line, a free-running teammate blocking in front of him…and only Dunklin’s kicker in the way.

Herculaneum’s PK did the right thing, moving bravely toward the sideline to try to cause a log-jam instead of hopping down the hash marks “trying to pick out an angle” (aka “a business decision”) as we see from so many kickers on long run-backs. But it was no use – 2 padawans at the 50-yard line are always better than 1. Bolton acquired just enough blocking to change course at midfield, streaking diagonally across the gridiron toward the rival end zone. Incredibly, a lone HHS tackler caught-up to Bolton right at the goal line, but the junior and the unsuccessful defender rolled all the way to the out-of-bounds line with Bolton stubbornly hanging onto the ball, a coda that produced laughter (and a flag) while the CCHS section couldn’t stop yelling long enough to chuckle. Crystal City led 26-14 as everyone at Sunken Place rubbed their eyes and pinched arms, hoping what they’d seen was real.

Brother, is it ever getting real. Crystal City went into Friday’s scrum just hoping to have an 8-1 record to brag about. Instead, by the end, Crystal had Herculaneum waving the white flag. Dearing drove the Blackcats inside the Red Zone again with under 1:00 to play, but Herculaneum’s lack of urgency to stop the clock betrayed no forthcoming Hail Mary attempt if the ‘Cats had scored. The QB did commit a final, embarrassing mistake that doomed Herky’s C3 contenders to a 13+ point loss, when Dearing’s final attempt was intercepted for another – yes, another – 100-yard TD by none other than Mr. Bolton.

The PA announcer’s voice sank as he watched Bolton dance, prance, and sashay into the Herky end zone on the Hornets’ 2nd-and-final interception for points. We assume that the announcer believed Friday’s star was guilty of bad sportsmanship, taunting the Blackcats with a rather meaningless TD to end the game. What the CCHS public-address announcer didn’t seem to know was that Bolton wasn’t celebrating a “meaningless” score at ALL, but a key touchdown that should have given Crystal City a potential home-game in Week 11.

MSHSAA’s rules state that winning margins of 13+ points count as an extra bonus in the standings. Crystal’s modest schedule in 2022 has prevented the Hornets from racking-up a formidable point-total in MSHSAA’s Class 1 standings. That’s made the Sunken Place kids extremely keen on rolling-up lopsided wins over Class 3 and Class 4 opponents when possible, and thus getting seeded over SPX and Brentwood in the playoffs – a goal that Fox’s staff probably would not allow the players to worry about or even think-slash-talk about on Crystal City practice fields, in favor of going “1-0” each week.

But once a rivalry game has been decided, and the coach is looking over his shoulder trying to avoid a Gatorade bath, padawans are free to try to finish in 1st or 2nd place any which way they can. Bolton’s final touchdown gave CCHS multiple blow-out wins over Class 3 and Class 4 this season, and vanquished a 5-3 team by 13+ points in an outcome that should’ve given Crystal a higher seed than the Eagles.

Except it hasn’t. Brentwood, mysteriously, has taken the #2 seed in District 2 by a wide berth, despite tying Crystal City’s record at 8-1 against what may’ve been the weakest and most questionable schedule of any MSHSAA team in 2022. That’s a bummer. But there’s no time for bummers when recapping the Play of the Year, so we’ll save that story for the upcoming District preview.

Finally, of course readers who want to see and hear the play (excuse me, that’s THE PLAY) have many options on the World Wide Web. The Geek does not have the option of inserting THE PLAY into the midst of Friday’s story because the best version is still unclipped and on YouTube, and the whole video takes 3 and a half hours. (It’s hard to even remember which paragraph you were on after that long.)

Here’s THE PLAY time-stamped on the YouTube vid:

…but time-stamps never work for every browser, so in case anyone needs to scroll, aka fast-forward, THE PLAY happens at 2:30:57.

Readers can also visit Regional Radio’s SoundCloud to hear the veteran radio man Hal Neisler’s calls of the Senior Night triumph at CCHS.

See you Thursday for TGG’s District Playoff Preview!