Senior athlete Lorenzo Arce recorded five catches for 42 yards, and he carried the ball for a two-point conversion.
“Hunter Bell … kind of had a breakout game,” Heiderich said, referencing another senior athlete on the team. “It was his first night really running the ball at the tailback position.”
Bell had three carries for 21 yards and a touchdown while also finishing with four catches for 70 yards and a touchdown.
“The whole defense, I’ll shout them out,” Heiderich said, “because like I said, any time you put a goose egg on the scoreboard, it’s a good night.”
Whitehead, also a linebacker, led the team with 11 total tackles, including nine solo; Webb, also a defensive back, had seven total tackles, including five solo; and Bell, also a defensive back, had six tackles, all solo, including one for a loss.
Senior linebacker Grant Applewhite recovered two fumbles, and sophomore defensive tackle Ethan Hatch caught an interception.
Reflecting Thursday night on having played his last game on Pillow Field, Webb said he was “just so lucky and blessed, honestly, to play on this field with all my buddies, but I tried not to let it get me down too much. I’ve got next week, trying to get ready, trying to stay focused for the state championship, and yes, sir, just trying to keep my mind focused, but I’d say it had a pretty good impact on me, just playing here one last time.”
As they turned their focus to the rematch with Brunswick Academy in the state title game, both Heiderich and Webb expressed a shared perspective that their victory over the Vikings on Oct. 24 should not have been so close.
“Last week, we had a lot of opportunities where we had the game in the bag, and we really gave it up,” Webb said. “That’s where our head just came off, we just lost sight of what we were doing, we lost focus. So we’ve got to stay focused next week, really tie everything down and just play as a team, no individualism.”
Heiderich said, “We, last week, gave up a lot of big plays, defensively, and that was really what kept them in the game, and that’s kind of the goal moving forward is to stop the big plays and execute well on offense. We had a lot of mental errors on offense last week, and we’re just trying to cut those down.
“It’s an emotional game for our guys, it’s a rivalry game,” the coach added, “and sometimes when high schoolers get emotional, you see those things kind of come out, so we’ve just got to get all of that stuff straight, and I think we’ll have fun next Saturday.”
He reiterated that while they have played their last game of the season at home, the Raiders are not finished yet.
“Our job’s not done,” Heiderich said. “So I’m trying to keep the eyes on the prize, and then a year or 20 years from now, we can look back at it and smile and enjoy all the memories that we made along the way.”
