AWM fans invade turf after game

AWM fans invade turf after game

Sports Editor Following last Friday night’s football game between West Memphis and Marion, several West Memphis fans jumped the fence separating the stands from the sidelines at Patriot Stadium and flooded the field following the 22-10 Blue Devil victory.

Marion athletic director Paul Johnston said that they went to great lengths to avoid such an incident before the contest.

“We had every gate in the stadium locked, except for the one that the players use to get onto the field,” said the fourth-year director of athletics. “We had security there, like we always do.”

The West Memphis fans rushed the field and went out to the 50-yard line of the turf and celebrated with the Blue Devil football team while spraying water and jumping up and down on the “Flying Elvis” Patriot logo.

“It was chaos out there,” said Jed Davis, Marion’s head football coach. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a visiting team’s students or fans rush the field after a game like that, definitely not a regular season game. Especially when everything is locked up to keep that from happening.

I understand being excited for your team winning, but that was a first for me.”

Davis and Johnston both said that they made it a point to try and limit opportunities for conflict by making their students stay in the stands prior to the game, rather than joining the Marion cheerleaders on the field before the football team ran out of their tunnel.

“Just trying to be proactive,” said Davis. “We told our students to wait until the team leaves the field, because of some of the incidents that we’ve seen in this game in the past.

We wanted to try and avoid something ugly like that.”

The incident led to a confrontation between assistant coaches from both teams that had to be broken up. West Memphis is 13-0 against Marion in the alltime series, which confused Davis even further.

“To me, I don’t know that you can have it both ways,” says the coach.

“You can’t say that it’s not a rivalry because Marion has never won, and I totally get that. I understand it.

But if you say that it’s not a rivalry because we’ve never won, then why treat it like a huge rivalry game? If it truly wasn’t a rivalry then I think most people would say ‘That’s what I expected to happen’ and go on about their business and probably not storm the field. So, I think that goes to show that it means more to both sides than maybe they were letting

on.”

The arrival of the fans on the field occurred before the game officials left the turf. The mob prevented teams from shaking after the contest.

“That’s really the shame of it, because that’s what you’re supposed to do in in that situation, is to shake hands,” Johnston says. “At the end of all of it, you’re supposed to leave it on the field, and we didn’t get to do that.”

“You’ve got that many kids, and there just aren’t that many adults, so that makes for a very volatile situation,” said Davis. “No good can come from it, and my main concern was the safety of my kids and making sure that they didn’t do something stupid. I expect our kids to rise above that level and we simply won’t be a part of it.”

Marion and West Memphis are both are home next week as they continue conference play.

The Patriots host Little Rock Hall, while the Blue Devils welcome the Searcy Lions.

Long kick?

Davis called for a special

teams package early in the game when he called for kicker/punter Bradford Doherty on a fourth down.

That much wasn’t noteworthy, but how Doherty turned the ball over to West Memphis was.

Marion lined up in a field goal formation from his team’s 48-yard line, which would have amounted to a 65-yard kick.

The kick didn’t come close to being good, but Davis didn’t expect it to.

“There’s really no difference between a punt and a field goal attempt,” Davis explains. “According to the rules, that’s just a scrimmage kick. So whether you try to kick a field goal or a punt, it’s just a kick, and you can return those things. The deal is that most of the time, when you’re attempting a field goal, it goes through the back of the end zone. It’s just a different way of doing it.

“We feel like by lining up and kicking it that way, we can aim and kick it farther and better, and we don’t have to snap it as far. It’s 7 or 8 yards as opposed to 14 yards, so that’s even more yardage.”

The kick was successful early on, though a West Memphis returner did break one across midfield late in the game.

Successful onside

Following a 3rd-and-25 touchdown pass from junior quarterback Peyton Walker to Tom Young, Marion led 10-6 with 9:29 left in the third quarter.

On the ensuing kickoff, and also being aided by a West Memphis roughingthe- kicker penalty, Marion pulled off a successful onside kick that bounced off of the turf and took a big bounce before being recovered by sophomore defensive back Kenta Jones.

“It was two-fold, because we had the momentum and we had the penalty too,” Davis said. “We’re kicking from their 45, so at worst, they get it at their own 35, and maybe we even get the ball. Everything says that you at least give it a shot.”

Marion lost the ball on downs on the following drive.

By Chuck Livingston