By Gary Curreri
Blanche Ely senior quarterback Jevon Williams ran 11 times for a game-high 135 yds. and three scores as the Tigers rallied for a 28-16 win over visiting Coconut Creek on Friday night.
Blanche Ely (7-1) won for the fifth straight game and will face Atlantic on Friday at 7 p.m. for the District 13-7A championship.
“Speed is everything,” said Williams, a three-time state champion hurdler in track. “Football is speed, it is not just strength, and I go by speed…if they can’t stop me, they can’t stop me.
“Last year, we won one game and, this year, we won our seventh game,” added Williams, who also threw for 100 yds. in the game. “We are on a winning streak right now. It feels great to me, and I am proud of this team and proud of myself as well. We got Atlantic next week and we are going to win that game as well.”
Coconut Creek (4-4) got on the scoreboard first on a safety when Blanche Ely punter Schneider Etienne had his knee touch down in the end zone as he was attempting to punt the ball for a 2-0 Cougars’ lead.
Coconut Creek scored on its opening offensive series when Cedrick Bennett hit Damien Heller on a screen pass, and he went untouched from 23-yds. out for a 9-0 lead with 8:22 remaining in the first quarter.
Williams scored on a 6-yd. run to trim the lead to 9-7 before the Cougars’ John Blackmon hauled in an 8-yd. TD pass from Bennett to boost the lead to 16-7.
The Tigers scored twice before the end of the first half to take the lead for good as Williams scored on a 6-yd. run and Shomari Lawrance scored on a 13-yd. run to cap a 9-play, 63-yd. drive with 3:22 left in the first half. Lawrance finished the game with 14 carries for 63 yds.
The Tigers capitalized on an interception by Antonio McBride, and Williams padded the lead when he scored on a 59-yd. run with 8:49 remaining in the third quarter for a 28-16 lead.
Blanche Ely’s lone defeat this season was a 42-0 loss to Deerfield Beach in the third game of the season. Since then, they have reeled off five wins in a row.
“Deerfield was a game where I felt we beat ourselves and I didn’t harp on that,” said Blanche Ely coach Clifford Wimberly after the Tigers finished 1-9 last year. “We jumped right back into action and put that game behind us. I told the kids we have a long season left to play and our goal was to ‘restore the roar,’ we would no longer be the step-child in Broward County and I think we are doing that.”
“I made the kids believe,” Wimberly said. “I gave them a vision…this is one of the heartbeats of the community. This is where my family is from and I am deeply rooted in Pompano. I knew how big the job was when I was taking it. We were 1-9 last year, but a lot of people don’t realize we probably played the toughest schedule in the state, and we have only lost one game since the spring.”
Blanche Ely is 10-5 against the Cougars dating back to 2004. Coconut Creek had won the last two meetings, and three of the last four entering the contest. The Tigers have outscored their opposition 244-126 this season.
Bucks fall 28-7 at St. Thomas Aquinas
Deerfield Beach fell on the road to St. Thomas Aquinas, 28-7 in a nationally-televised game that featured two of the top teams in the county.
The Bucks (5-3) had their five-game win streak come to a halt as the St. Thomas Aquinas team remained undefeated through seven games.
The Bucks’ Xavier Restrepo got the Bucks on the board first with a 54-yd. scoring toss from Michael Pratt with 7:19 remaining in the first half. From there, it was all Raiders who finished with eight sacks and scored 28 unanswered points.
