Gryphons earn victory while remembering slain peer

As Rocky Mount High players started to receive word of freshman football player Lavontae Brown’s death via Instagram early Friday afternoon, a night that should have been a coronation of sorts for the Big East champions soon took on a far more somber tone.

Gryphons coach Jason Battle and junior varsity head coach Jason Bracey both described Brown as a kid who always had a smile on his face, and who was committed to the Rocky Mount High program as much as any other.

It was understandable then that the Gryphons played most of Friday night’s game at Northern Nash in a daze. A second-half surge gave Rocky Mount High a 20-13 win over the rival Knights and the outright Big East crown and likely either a No. 3 or No. 4 seed in the 3-A or 3-AA playoffs when brackets are released this afternoon.

“I saw (Lavontae) almost every day and would always tell him just to keep his head screwed on straight,” Gryphons junior linebacker Sherrod Greene said. “I don’t want to say us coming out here and not playing well was because of what happened (Friday), but yeah, we had a lot on our minds other than football.”

Greene scored the Gryphons’ final touchdown on a 6-yard run in the fourth quarter after Northern Nash botched a punt snap deep in its own territory, giving Rocky Mount High the first semblance of breathing room it had enjoyed all night.

After the Gryphons had mostly rolled through the Big East, especially offensively, Northern Nash held them scoreless in the first half.

The Gryphons (9-2, 5-0) rushed for 91 yards and completed just 2 of 9 passing attempts in the first two quarters.

Forrest Bell missed two shots down the field early as the Gryphons tried to back the Knights off the line, but their inability to do so hampered running lanes.

“Our first priority is always stopping the run, and we’ve done that all year,” Knights coach Randy Raper said. “We don’t have a lot of size up front, but those boys will fight you all night.”

Rocky Mount High’s size advantage paid dividends after the break, however. Battle implored his offensive line and backs to take pride in what they were doing at halftime and to stop going through the motions.

BJ Sanders responded with a 57-yard touchdown run on the third play of the second half.

The two teams traded punts on the next two possessions, before Detrell Revis and Greene combined for a long punt return touchdown that was called back for a block-in-the-back penalty that had Gryphons coaches livid on the sidelines.

No matter, though.

Bell hit KK Edwards for a 46-yard gain on the first play of the drive, and Nick Bynum broke through off left tackle for a 19-yard touchdown run on 3rd-and-8 to give the Gryphons their first lead of the night at the 11:16 mark of the fourth quarter.

“I thought we did wake up a little bit after halftime, yeah,” Battle said. “But I hope this week was a wake-up call. We’re going to get people’s best shots from now on, and we can’t come out here just expecting to be handed wins.”

Northern Nash (3-8, 1-4) almost mounted a late comeback, as Christian Daniels cut the  margin to seven with 3:25 to go, finding Raymond Bullock for a 23-yard score on 4th-and-5.

Rocky Mount High went three-and-out and punted back to Northern Nash with 2:19 remaining, and the Knights started at their own 22 with no timeouts remaining.

Daniels broke through up the middle for 33 yards on first down, but the Gryphons’ pass-rushing duo of Greene and Artavious Richardson took over from there, forcing four straight incompletions.

“(Friday) was tough, man,” Greene said. “Lots of negative energy, and you could tell it affected us. But we did just enough.”

By FOSTER LANDER

Rocky Mount Telegram

Saturday, November 7, 2015