Rocky Mount High School | Archive | December, 2015

Telegram photo / Adam Jennings
Rocky Mount High quarterback Forrest Bell runs the ball during the Gryphons NCHSAA 3-A state championship win over South Point on Friday at Kenan Memorial Stadium.

CHAPEL HILL – Forrest Bell could not have scripted a better ending to his senior year.

The Rocky Mount High quarterback did not have to utilize his arm much in the Gryphons’ first 15 games, but with everything on the line in the state championship game, Bell stepped up.

The game’s MVP completed 15 of his 21 passes for 210 yards – the most attempts and yards he had all season.

A week after only having to throw the ball twice in a win over Eastern Alamance, Bell said he didn’t know he would be such a vital part of the gameplan Friday. But when the moment arrived, he was ready.

“I knew coming into the game that no matter what happens, I just got to remain stable emotionally,” Bell said. “I think that’s really helped the team this year.”

Belmont South Point put a large emphasis on stuffing the run, and did so effectively for large stretches. The Red Raiders limited the Gryphons to 135 rushing yards and shut down the outside lanes Rocky Mount High loves to attack.

The goal was to force the Gryphons into throwing quite a bit, knowing full well Bell could potentially burn them. The Red Raiders’ defensive backs played off the Gryphons’ wide receivers and allowed them to set up screen passes and comeback routes.

Those became a favorite of Bell’s, connecting with Jaclayton Freeman seven times for 68 yards.

“They got a great running game … we knew we’d have our hands full,” South Point coach Mickey Lineberger said. “We took them out of their Wing-T stuff and made them throw the football. … We knew they were capable of throwing the football, and their quarterback had a great night, and he did a good job.”

Bell’s MVP credentials were sealed when he directed the 18-play, 89-yard drive at the end of regulation that tied the game for the Gryphons.

He converted a third-and-17 with a 19-yard scramble complete with a pump fake five yards past the line of scrimmage that forced the defender to jump.

Entering that drive, Bell said his main focus was to help the Gryphons win, individual accolades aside.

“I’m a senior, I want to win this game, I want to go out right,” Bell said. “This team is too important to me. I just wanted to win, that’s all I could think about, to give this team a chance at the end.”

Rocky Mount High coach Jason Battle said he had no qualms about relying so heavily on his senior quarterback.

He said Bell showed the poise expected of a player in his situation.

“Forrest did exactly what a senior quarterback does,” Battle said. “He takes control of the offense, he never gets too high, never gets too low, he just continues to play even-keeled and make plays.”

By Josh Walfish

Sports Writer for Rocky Mount Telegram

Saturday, December 12, 2015

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There was a time this spring and summer when Rocky Mount High senior JáQuez Johnson was not, in the words of Gryphons coach Jason Battle, a good person to be around.

Johnson’s grades dropped last spring, so much so that the Gryphons’ starting left tackle was forced to go to summer school and miss offseason workouts with the football team.

Teammates started asking around.

Where had ‘Big Quez’ been?

When was he coming back?

Battle knew what was going on at home and in Johnson’s personal life, but he wanted the team to hear from the source what had gone wrong.

“It was an emotional time for him and his teammates,” Battle said on Thursday. “Everybody in this school knows who he is. He had to own up for all those things he had done incorrectly. He could tell his teammates and coaches were hurt, as well as his mom and his brothers. He had alot of people he had to prove wrong.”

After the Gryphons’ 2014 season ended in defeat in the 3-A second round, the 6-foot-2, 300-pound Johnson approached his mother, Shonda – a former three-sport athlete at Rocky Mount High – with an idea.

He wanted to work part-time to help support Shonda, a single mother to 17-year-old JáQuez, 11-year-old Jataevious and eight-year-old Jamari.

JáQuez lives with his grandmother, Carolyn Johnson, in Rocky Mount.

Shonda, who taught for four years at Edwards Middle School and now lives in Greenville with Jataevious and Jamari and works in Pitt County, worried a part-time job would pull her oldest son away from school and from being a kid.

But JáQuez insisted, so he went to work on weekends at a Hardees in Rocky Mount, where he has continued to put in Saturday and Sunday shifts through football season.

JáQuez’s father, Artayia, has not been around since Jataevious was born. Artayia spent time in and out of prison for various drug offenses.

When JáQuez has tried to reconnect with his father – mostly for the sake of his two younger brothers – Artayia has found an excuse to not see his three boys, JáQuez said.

At that point, JáQuez said, what’s the use in trying?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Shonda’s motherly sense last spring that JáQuez was putting too much on his plate was correct.

He lost focus on schoolwork and ran around at times with a group of older friends who had little structure enforced at home and did what they pleased at night.

“I think he got to a point where he had some things in his life that overwhelmed him a little bit,” Battle said. “He started thinking it was OK to follow in the path of others instead of being himself. He just was not putting himself in a position to be the best person he could be.”

‘Big Quez’ has always been just that – big – which meant he played up an age group or two in youth football. When Shonda worked at Boys and Girls Clubs in Rocky Mount and in Eastern N.C., JáQuez would go with her and hang out with older boys.

By the time JáQuez moved to Rocky Mount High from Rocky Mount Prep as a freshman, he had played with a number of upperclassmen on the Gryphons’ football team.

JáQuez stayed out of trouble last year, but the confluence of factors snowballed.

“Last year, I just had alot going on with housing,” JáQuez said Wednesday afternoon. “Second semester last year, my grades started to drop and I just wasn’t focused. At the end of the year, when I knew I had to go to summer school, I realized that I might not be able to play football my senior year and that’s when I think stuff started to turn for me.”

JáQuez has always been wise for his age, almost preternaturally so, Shonda said, but he needed to hear from those who love and support him that he needed to get back on track.

“(Mom’s) main thing is that if we’re going to do something, we do it all the way and don’t quit,” JáQuez said. “She told me that I was getting older and that she wouldn’t always be there for me. She told me that I had to work at things, that she couldn’t always help me and that I had to do what I can do for myself.”

JáQuez considered the example he had been setting for his two little brothers. Shonda got choked up when asked about the relationship Jataevious and Jamari have with JáQuez.

“JáQuez’s brothers, if you say his name, they just light up,” she said. “JaQuez is like their world. They couldn’t ask for a better big brother. He’s supportive, he’s encouraging, he’s everything you’d hope a father would be.”

With his head back on straight and summer school complete, JáQuez stood in front of his teammates and brothers, coaches and mentors, and owned up to his shortcomings in the classroom on a Monday afternoon.

He promised to work hard for them and not just for himself, and the team welcomed him back.

JáQuez has been a captain for all but one of the Gryphons’ games this season.

Despite JáQuez’s laid-back nature, Battle said, there’s a commanding presence about him that causes others to listen.

They know he has seen his share of hard times and is still standing.

With one game remaining in his Gryphons career – the 3-A state championship against Belmont South Point at 7:35 p.m. tonight in Chapel Hill – JáQuez has left a legacy on the Rocky Mount High program that even he could not have imagined even six months ago.

“He’s put himself in a position to be a role model, not only to his teammates but for his brothers and his family,” Battle said. “He’s changed so much as far as being a joyful person. I’m glad to have him back like he is now, and I wouldn’t trade that kid for anybody.”

By FOSTER LANDER

Sports Writer for Rocky Mount Telegram

Thursday, December 10, 2015

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Telegram photo / Adam Jennings
Rocky Mount High cornerback Aaron Parker watches a drill during practice Tuesday at Rocky Mount High School.

In the week leading up to Rocky Mount High’s Oct. 9 Big East opener, heavy rains related to Hurricane Joaquin forced the football team to practice indoors.

The Gryphons ran ‘*******’ sprints on the Monday afternoon of Nash Central week in the stuffy gym to remain in shape, especially with a bye week in between the final game of non-conference play and the conference opener.

One Rocky Mount High senior would only make it through one sprint before his season changed.

After ******* No. 2 – when most would be breathless, sure, but nothing a few seconds of rest couldn’t fix – Aaron Parker was lightheaded and cramping badly below his knees, to the point where he lost feeling.

Parker waited for the feeling in his legs to return, but even when he caught his breath, his body still ached. Something wasn’t right.

When Parker went home that night, the throbbing pain spread throughout his entire body, to the muscles and down to the bones.

It had been 10 years, Parker estimated after a Gryphons practice this week, since he’d felt that sort of distress.

It had been a decade since Parker’s last sickle cell crisis.

Parker, a rangy defensive back for the 3-A Eastern Regional champion Gryphons, was born with sickle cell disease, a
hereditary, chronic blood disorder that affects an estimated 1 in 500 African-American children in the United States and 90,000 people in this country overall.

The disease harms red blood cells, forcing the cells to turn boomerang-shaped and lose the ability to retain oxygen and pass through veins.

Usual effects include episodes of pain, a weakened immune system, and fatigue.

Parker’s mother, Lawanda Staton, does not have sickle cell disease and doesn’t know what it feels like to have a crisis, but that Monday night, she knew one thing: that it was time to go to the hospital, where Parker received intravenous fluids. That was all doctors could do.

“They said it was a good thing that we came in at that time because if it had gotten any worse, they didn’t know if they would have been able to stop it,” Parker said.

The visit helped Parker’s sickle cell crisis last eight hours instead of, potentially, a week, but doctors at the Boice-Willis Clinic in Rocky Mount and Rocky Mount High trainers decided Parker would sit out of football for the foreseeable future.

“I was devastated,” Parker said. “I felt like I was just in a dark room by myself and nobody could help me. I didn’t go to school Tuesday, but I did come to talk to coach (Jason) Battle. He said that I’d done the right thing.”

Staton, as any mother of a child with sickle cell disease would, had her share of reservations and concerns when Parker tried out for football in seventh grade and later made his eighth-grade team.

“I had real issues with him playing football,” Staton said. “We talked about it when he was younger, but as he got older, he was still gung ho about doing it. I talked to him about some of the issues that come with playing football, and he was still eager to do it. So all I can do is try to educate him about what the dangers are and what he needs to do to be able to stay out there.”

Staton said Parker is smart off the football field. He’s in Rocky Mount High’s International Baccalaureate program and has applied early decision to North Carolina, N.C. State and the University of Virginia with plans to study engineering. She can only hope and pray that her son is that smart with his health.

While Parker sat out earlier this season, Rocky Mount High established itself as the favorite in the Big East.

The Gryphons rolled Nash Central, survived a scare from Wilson Hunt and rallied from an early 14-0 deficit at Wilson Fike to start conference play 3-0.

Parker spent most of his afternoons during that three-week period out on the practice field watching his teammates work.

He grew restless, not content to let his senior season end on the whims of medicine and blood cells, and he began running and pushing himself in his backyard. Parker discovered that he had not lost his stamina.

“When he was sitting out those three weeks, it was tearing him to pieces,” Staton said. “He got up one day and said, ‘OK mama, I’m ready.’ And I said, ‘If football is what you want to do and that’s what you love, I support you.’”

So Staton took Aaron to the Boice-Willis Clinic on Oct. 22, one day before the Gryphons’ trip to Fike, where doctors asked him a series of questions.

Do you feel light-headed?

No, Parker said.

Do you feel nauseated?

No.

Pain in your muscles or joints?

No, sir.

Parker was clear to return to football, with only one directive from doctors: stay hydrated, which is crucial for those with sickle cell. Battle held Parker out of the Fike game, then allowed him to return for the de facto Big East title game against Southern Nash one week later.

Parker’s reintroduction to the Gryphons’ secondary made a major impact. With the 6-foot-1, 165-pound defender back in the fold, Rocky Mount High held Firebirds quarterback Zack Foster to 67 passing yards, and the Gryphons wrapped up the Big East title with a 35-14 win on the strength of two defensive touchdowns.

Two weeks later, Parker intercepted two Burlington Williams passes, one near the Gryphons’ goal line, as Rocky Mount High won its first round playoffs game.

“When Aaron came back, it was real exciting,” Rocky Mount High senior tight end Brandon Valentine said Tuesday. “I wouldn’t say that the secondary really needed help, but he gave them a big lift.”

With Parker starting at cornerback since his health scare, Rocky Mount High has won seven games in a row.

The Gryphons have the school’s and city’s attention; a steady stream of classmates have offered encouragement this week ahead of Friday’s 3-A state championship game in Chapel Hill, and onlookers at the Rocky Mount Christmas Parade on Sunday were quick to offer congratulations after the Gryphons’ win at Eastern Alamance in the 3-A Eastern final.

“Coach Battle has said all along that all we’ve wanted was a chance, and now we’re taking advantage of it,” Parker said.

By FOSTER LANDER

Sports Writer for Rocky Mount Telegram

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

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Telegram photo / Abbi O’Leary
Rocky Mount Senior High 1977 Eastern 4-A Championship blanket.

If anyone hinged their bets directly to polls, they would have known that Rocky Mount High wasn’t supposed to make the 4-A state championship football game in the fall of 1977.

Despite winning their conference championship and heading into the playoffs with only one loss, coach Walt Wiggins’ Gryphons were certainly not game enough to compete with the likes of the East Region’s powerhouse teams.

“We were underdogs all the way through the playoffs,” Wiggins said in a telephone conversation earlier this week. “There was not a single game we were supposed to win, but the kids get emotionally involved, start playing well and things happen.”

Perhaps the 2015 Gryphons are thinking along the same lines. They too, went undefeated in league play and were expected to win a few games but perhaps not reach Friday’s NCHSAA 3-A state championship game against Belmont South Point at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill.

Though this year’s Gryphons team was not an underdog in each of their postseason games, the 1977 team – the last Gryphons squad to play for a football state championship – was supposed to be one and done.

Even with a program record-setting quarterback in Jess Eberdt, a pair of future Division I wide receivers in Dee Whitley (N.C. State) and Mike Lewis (Maryland), none of the various state polls mentioned the Gryphons within the 4-A ranks.

Rocky Mount was just three years removed from a 3-6-1 record, and Wiggins and the program had plenty of skeptics.

To open the 1977 playoffs, the Gryphons were up against their nemesis when Goldsboro came to town. Rocky Mount had lost 11 consecutive games to Goldsboro, and there was little reason to believe after a 7-0 halftime deficit that Rocky Mount could do much to change those fortunes.

The Gryphons forced overtime, scored a touchdown on its first offensive drive, then celebrated in front of an estimated 5,000 fans at Memorial Stadium as Goldsboro missed an extra point after its touchdown.

Rocky Mount 14, Goldsboro 13.

One giant knocked down.

Up next was undefeated Jacksonville, ranked No. 1 in the state at that time, and the Gryphons drove more than two hours to the southeastern part of the state and knocked off the Cardinals, 20-13, in the second round.

More than 8,500 people were in attendance as the Gryphons defeated the previously-unbeaten Cardinals.

Jacksonville had not allowed 20 points all season.

“This was the finest football game we played all year,” Wiggins told Evening Telegram Sports Writer John Evans after the game.

Despite dethroning yet another powerhouse, Rocky Mount went into the Eastern Regional final at Fayetteville Pine Forest as an underdog.

Whitley said the Gryphons had a solid blend of juniors and seniors who were close and have remained so 38 years later.

Whitley, who combined for more than 1,000 yards of offense between receiving and rushing, felt a special sense of Gryphons pride as the season continued.

His father, Dudley Whitley, had been a coach when Danny Talbot and the Gryphons won the triple crown of championships in 1963-64 (football, basketball, baseball).

The Gryphons were only two victories away from leg one of that feat.

Buck Williams and Jeff Battle would lead the Gryphons to the boys’ state title in the winter, and the baseball team reached the Eastern Regional finals in the spring.

“I knew about high school winning because I heard all the stories from my dad,” Whitley said. “That was our plan – to win the Triple Crown. We came close.”

As the Gryphons’ confidence began to grow, their bodies became weaker. Eberdt was held out of practice for each of the playoffs games because of a sports hernia.

Wiggins said the team ran two offenses in practice: The team’s usual spread offense for when Eberdt was to be under center, and an option offense for when the super-talented Lewis moved from wide receiver to quarterback.

Against Pine Forest, Eberdt was at his best.

After a first half dominated by rain was complete, Eberdt led the Gryphons to all of its points in a 25-22 victory.

Eberdt threw for 257 yards, 160 of which went to Lewis, who caught a school-record 12 passes.

Lee Overton and Joel Moore each finished with 10 tackles for a Rocky Mount defense that held Pine Forest to only 149 yards rushing.

Pine Forest came into the game averaging 300 yards per contest on the ground.

This meant that a fourth and final upset would lift the Gryphons to their first state title since 1964.

Despite an upbeat, send-off celebration from fans and their peers before the team bus headed to Charlotte, the Gryphons’ abilities could no longer match their will to win.

Injuries to key players – including Whitley, who was not 100 percent for the state championship – came at the wrong time.

The Gryphons scored first in the state title game but lost to East Mecklenburg, 28-9, in front of an estimated 11,000 fans, including two thousand Gryphons supporters.

Rocky Mount was held to 91 yards rushing and 116 passing.

Longtime Gryphons trainer Bernie Capps said among the banged up players was lineman Lee Overton, whose knee was injured heading into the championship game.

Considering the Gryphons faced an East Mecklenburg team that averaged 225 pounds on its offensive line, such injuries could not have come at a worse time.

“By the time we got to Charlotte, we were beat up,” said Wiggins, whose tenure as coach ran from 1970-1982 and a brief return in 1993.

Wiggins, who now spends his time watching football on television and playing golf, returned to the Gryphons as an assistant in 1997, and he helped coach senior quarterback Jason Battle, who is the Gryphons’ current coach.

“Jason was an individual who loved to win and worked hard to do it,” Wiggins said.

Eberdt set a school record for most completions in a season (129).

Lewis hauled in 676 passing yards that season.

Whitley, who graduated in 1979, currently is an attorney at Battle, Winslow, Scott & Riley in Rocky Mount.

Whitley and the 1977 squad weren’t able to finish off the season in a winning way, but they had fun in proving themselves to others.

Despite the program’s extended layoff from football state title games, Whitley said he doesn’t think this year’s team has anything to prove.

“My advice to them would be to stay in the moment and not let circumstances get too overwhelming for them,” Whitley said. “Considering what they’re doing, those guys are good enough. Don’t do any more than they can do and let the chips fall where they may.”

By Jessie H. Nunery

Sports Editor for Rocky Mount Telegram

Thursday, December 10, 2015

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Telegram photo / Abbi O’Leary / Sports Writer
Rocky Mount High School holds the trophy for the NCHSAA 3A East Regional Championship Friday after their 42-21 win against undefeated Eastern Alamance High School. Rocky Mount will play for the state title next week.

Telegram photo / Abbi O’Leary / Sports Writer
Rocky Mountв€™s running back Nick Bynum rushes through the Eastern Alamance defense Friday during their NCHSAA 3A semi-final round of the playoffs at Eastern Alamance High School.

MEBANE – Rocky Mount High watched a movie of its entire season, from summer workouts all the way through last week’s dramatic win over Eden Morehead in the 3-A third round, on the charter bus ride to Eastern Alamance on Friday afternoon.

Turns out the Gryphons had plenty more to add to what already is a long highlight reel, and they will have one more week to give that movie an ending few could have imagined.

Rocky Mount High, seeded third in the 3-A East, went on the road at top-seeded and unbeaten Eastern Alamance and raced to a 28-0 halftime lead, then held off a late Eagles rally to win in its first Eastern Regional Final appearance since 2008 and reach the state championship game next Friday night at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill.

“I don’t think it’s really hit me yet,” Gryphons senior linebacker Alex Henderson said. “We really do try to treat every game like it’s just the next one on our schedule, but next week will be a little different, definitely.”

Gryphons (13-2) coach Jason Battle has been on his team in the playoffs for not starting games quickly, especially as Rocky Mount High kept winning and facing tougher opposition.

Rocky Mount High players couldn’t put their fingers on what changed on Friday, but the energy during the Gryphons’ warmups on a sub-40 degree night in Mebane took on a menacing feel. Battle’s team was quieter than usual, dialed in, attentive to what was at stake, and it showed.

Even after one offensive series – the Gryphons turned over the ball on downs in Eastern Alamance (14-1) territory – Rocky Mount High’s running backs left the field knowing they were tougher than the Eagles’ defense.

Rocky Mount High’s defense forced a three-and-out on Eastern Alamance’s first drive, and five plays later, the Gryphons were in the end zone on Tyrell Forbes’ slippery 12-yard run.

“They were kinda soft, and we fed off that,” Forbes said.

Eastern Alamance’s first-half troubles had only just begun. The Eagles mounted a long drive and had first-and-goal, but two short runs and a John Lamot incompletion on third down forced a field goal try that came out low and was blocked.

Rocky Mount High took over at its own 7, and on 3rd-and-6 from the 11, the first play of the second quarter, BJ Sanders sprinted off right tackle for a 59-yard gain. Forbes then bounced his way for a 24-yard touchdown run and a 14-0 Gryphons lead, silencing a sold-out Eastern Alamance crowd.

Again, Eastern Alamance drove – this time, more than 50 yards on seven plays – but Lamot, trying to do too much early on, cost his team dearly. Under pressure from Thomas Battle and a host of other Gryphons, Lamot tried to spin out of a sack and throw to a teammate in the flat while falling down, but Rocky Mount High linebacker Rodquan White stepped in front of Lamot’s weak throw and high-stepped 85 yards for a touchdown.

“We came ready to go, ready to hit (Friday),” Henderson said. “The thing all year has been confidence. So even when they moved the ball on us, we still made a play.”

Nick Bynum added to a hardly-believable Rocky Mount High lead at the 4:44 mark of the second quarter, darting 48 yards up the middle for a touchdown on the first play after an Eastern Alamance punt and a nice return from Detrell Revis.

Eastern Alamance looked poised to at least end the shutout just before the intermission and had first-and-goal from the Gryphons’ 5. After Lamot ran for two yards on first down, Kendall Walker lost one on second down.

Lamot got three of those back on third down. But on fourth-and-goal from the one, Sherrod Greene and a bevy of Gryphons tacklers spun Lamot down short of the goal line, preserving a 28-0 lead.

The Eagles scored on their second possession of the second half on a 15-yard pass from Lamot to Tyler Bryant on 4th-and-10, but BJ Sanders answered with a two-yard touchdown run to push the Gryphons’ lead to 35-7 after three quarters.

Eastern Alamance got as close as 35-21 with two quick scores – thanks, in part, to Rocky Mount High players slipping on two separate fourth down attempts, coming up a yard shy both times – but the Gryphons’ defense was up to the task.

With Eastern Alamance at the Rocky Mount High 30 and poised to cut the deficit to seven with less than five minutes left, Lamot’s desperation to make a play was his downfall. The Elon commit tried to spin away from pressure by Artavious Richardson and flung a blind pass in front of him, but Henderson intercepted the ball and ran 66 yards for a game-sealing touchdown.

Detrell Revis intercepted Lamot on the Eagles’ next offensive snap, and the Gryphons ran out the clock to seal a berth in the 3-A state championship game against Belmont South Point next Friday night at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill. Kickoff is set for 7:35 p.m.

Battle had one message for his team as the Gryphons waited for the presentation of their 3-A East Regional championship trophy on Friday night.

“We got this trophy, and that’s great,” he said. “But we want that ring.”

Rocky Mount High players let out a long “Yeaaaah,” then asked to return to the bus to escape the cold. There was more work left to be done.

By FOSTER LANDER

Sports Writer for Rocky Mount Telegram

Saturday, December 5, 2015

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