Five fumbles frustrate faithful West Memphians

Five fumbles frustrate faithful West Memphians

Blue Devils fall for fifth straight time to Lions

WM School District

The West Memphis Blue Devils' season, through the midway point, can easily be summarized by one factor: Fumbles. The Blue Devils' first loss came down to a single play which cost them 14 points.

A fumble at the Little Rock Central 2 turned into a 95-yard scoop and score in a 17-12 loss to the Tigers.

And last Friday night at Hamilton-Shultz Field it was five fumbles which led to three Searcy touchdowns in West Memphis' 27-20 loss.

'We turned it over three times in the first half and even turned it over when it appeared we were going to score the tying (points),' said a frustrated West Memphis head coach Billy Elmore. 'You can't win that way. Ironically, our defense didn't play as well as we thought it would.

You give credit to Searcy.

But at the end of the day we didn't play very good football.'

Equally as frustrating as the five fumbles were, it is just as perplexing to West Memphians that Searcy now has five consecutive wins over their Blue Devils, a point that was not lost on Searcy head coach Mark Kelly.

'A win like this over a historic program such as West Memphis is not taken lightly by us,' he said.

The night was characterized by the Blue Devil offense failing to string together enough singles together to score, but it was explosive enough to hit the Lions with enough home-run balls to keep the game close.

West Memphis could only rush for 149 yards for the game and had seven rushing plays that went for lost yardage.

'Very disappointing that we couldn't run the ball better than we did tonight,' Elmore stated.

Despite the three coughups in the first half, the Blue Devils (3-2 overall, 1-1 in the 6A-East Conference) led 14-13 at halftime on two Amaurius Stinnett touchdown passes.

Stinnett fumbled four times on the night, but he completed 7 of 11 passes for 165 yards. His TD strikes in the first half went to Jonathan Craig for 78 yards on the first play of the second quarter and to Joshua Hinton from 23 yards out.

Stinnett's third TD pass of the game came on the first possession of the second half when he connected once again to Hinton, this time from 26 yards out, giving the hosts a 20-13 lead.

But all the momentum that AWM had gathered by that time was squelched when Searcy's Jackson Hall returned the ensuing kickoff 53 yards to the Blue Devil 27.

Just two plays later, Searcy workhorse Camron Washington ran 23 yards for a touchdown to tie the game 20-20.

Searcy would never trail again.

The Lions (4-1, 2-0) got more than 90 percent of its offense from Washington, who got 32 rushes and made 152 yards out of them, and from quarterback Mason Schucker, who completed 17 of 28 passes for 191 yards and two touchdowns.

'We knew (Washington and Schucker) were good players,' Elmore said. 'But I never expected (Searcy) to run the ball on us like they did. That might be the most disappointing thing to come out of this.'

As much damage as Washington and Schucker did to the West Memphis defense, it was actually another player to stuck the dagger in the home team's hopes.

Sophomore running back Tony Young ran a sweep around the left side for a 20-yard touchdown with 5:44 left to play in the game to break the tie score.

West Memphis' final attempt at a tying touchdown was complicated, once again, by a fumble at the Searcy 32-yard line.

By Billy Woods