Nov. 30, 2009

Piedmont defeats Leeds 13-7, heads to title game

By Scott Wright

LEEDS — If the football field at Leeds High School ran east-west instead of north-south, Chase Childers could literally have run his second touchdown of the night all the way to Tuscaloosa.

Instead, Childers and his Piedmont teammates settled for completing the trip in a more figurative sense, earning the school's first-ever trip to the state finals with a 13-7 win over the defending 3A champion Friday night.

Childers busted through the line for a 48-yard run with just over two minutes remaining and scampered untouched down the middle of the field to give Piedmont a six-point lead. The Green Wave drove into Piedmont territory in the final seconds, but quarterback Rush Perkins's Hail Mary towards the end zone fell incomplete as time expired.

Childers also provided the only points in the first half, on a 17-yard run. He finished the game with 93 yards on 12 carries.

Leeds moved the ball well in the second quarter, but a pass into the end zone on fourth down was incomplete. Another drive ended with a missed field goal attempt.

The Green Wave tied the score in the fourth quarter on Keaton Glass's one-yard run before Childers secured the victory. The win avenged a 14-13 overtime loss on Oct. 16.

The Bulldogs' only other loss this season was to Cherokee County, head coach Steve Smith's alma mater, back in week one. The Warriors advanced to the Class 4A title game with a 37-20 win over Deshler. They will play Friday at 11 a.m. in Tuscaloosa.

Smith, who spent 11 years as head coach at Cedar Bluff, has compiled a win-loss record of 39-12 in four seasons with the Bulldogs. Before the season began, Smith told The Post he felt confident his team was ready to compete on a statewide level.

He's looking pretty smart, right now.

“Our ultimate goal is to be in Tuscaloosa and win the state championship,” Smith said a few days before the loss to Cherokee County on Aug. 28. “We feel like we have gotten to a point where we can be competitive and that that is a realistic goal — to play for the state championship.”

Before the loss in Centre, Smith said the history of the Cherokee County-Piedmont rivalry made the game important to him and his players. But he also predicted a loss wouldn't dampen any hopes his players had for earning a trip to Tuscaloosa.

“There's a lot of bragging rights for two teams this close together, but I know their goal is to be in the 4A state championship game, and our goal is to be in the 3A state championship game,” Smith said almost four months ago. “And this is a football-crazy place. Piedmont would explode if we could make that run to Tuscaloosa.”

Let's hope not, because the Bulldogs play Cordova Thursday morning at 11 a.m. at Bryant-Denny Stadium. The Blue Devils (13-1) previously won state titles in 1995 and 2007.

Tickets go on sale at booths outside the stadium at 9:30 a.m. and cost $10 each. They are good for admission to all three games to be played that day.