by Rusty Ellis
DeKalb County is headed to the playoffs, as the Tigers clinched the fourth and final playoff spot in Region 4-4A with their 35-20 win over White County.
The Warriors got the scoring started on their first possession, as Tripp Pinion hit Gage Stephenson for a 16-yard touchdown on fourth down to give WCHS a 7-0 lead. DeKalb County answered on their final possession of the first quarter, as Malachi Trapp scored the first of five touchdowns on the night with his 20-yard scoring run to tie the game at 7-7.
White County seemingly took full control of the game on their first two possessions of the second quarter, as an eight-yard touchdown run by Demarious Dowell and an 81-yard touchdown reception by Darvon Richmond gave Sparta a 20-7 lead with 7:49 to go in the first half.
The Tigers put the last points of the first half up with 5:47 remaining, as Trapp scored from five-yards-out to make the score 20-14 heading into the half.
After each team traded defensive stops to start the second half, it was DeKalb who took advantage of a Dowell fumble to take the lead on another five-yard touchdown run from Trapp. After the extra point, the Tigers held a 21-20 lead.
Trapp scored his final two touchdowns in the fourth quarter to seal the win, as DeKalb County knocked off Sparta 35-20 to clinch a playoff berth.
“It feels really good, we’ve been every year since 2011,” said DCHS head coach Steve Trapp. “These seniors didn’t want to be that group that let that streak end, so they took that to heart. The first half wasn’t the prettiest football, but the second half, we only stopped ourselves…when we were clean, it was another second half where our defense had a shutout in the second half.”
While the team struggled early on to build any momentum, Trapp continued telling his kids to keep plugging away at the ground game and eventually, they broke through.
And it was Malachi Trapp who had a lot to do with it.
“It’s about first-down efficiency and third-down conversions,” Trapp said. “I hated what (Trapp) missed, and we thought we weren’t going to have him available at all for the rest of the season, so just getting him back out here and seeing him progress to what we thought we would have in him, I’m just really proud of him…he finished the deal for us.”
The win takes a lot of the drama out of the regular season finale against Upperman next week, but make no mistake. Trapp has mentally moved on from the win and is already thinking about the Bees.
“We’ve got a lot of respect for their program, Coach Caine does a great job,” Trapp said. “We won’t be thinking about the playoffs, we’ll be thinking about playing football the way we’re supposed to play football, and they’ll be doing the same. So, it’s going to be another one of these games next week.”
White County will wrap up its season in Livingston against the Wildcats next Friday.
