By By BRIAN HAINES, Sports Writer
The outcome may not have been what he hoped for, but Washington head coach Sport Sawyer still enjoyed his time on the sideline during the East-West football game held at Jamieson Stadium at Grimsley High School in Greensboro.
The West grinded out a 22-7 victory over the East on Wednesday, led by offensive MVP Banks Jenkins of Myers Park High School who caught four passes for 86 yards. On defense, East Guilford’s Josh Morehead picked off a pass, recovered a fumble and made a tackle en route to being named the defensive MVP.
While Sawyer, who coached the wide receivers for the East squad, came away without a victory, he said the experience was a great one.
“It was a very rewarding experience to be able to work with some of the coaches like Walt Davis (head coach of the East squad, from South Central), Robert Curlings (New Bern) and coach (Russell) Weinstein (Roanoke Rapids),” Sawyer said. “It was very rewarding to work with them and see how they do things.
“It was also great to see all the other players from all the other schools as well. We had a great group of guys.”
The East hung with the West for a better part of four quarters, but some big plays and turnovers made the difference.
The West took a 9-0 lead into halftime and put some real distance between themselves and the East when it scored two fourth quarter touchdowns.
The East picked up its lone score with 3:35 remaining in the game when Adrian Scott scored from 10 yards out.
“Our guys worked hard all week, they came in last Thursday and practiced through Wednesday,” Sawyer said. “In the game we just had a couple of bounces in the beginning that did not go our way and we got behind a little. … It was just one of those games where a few plays here and there made a big difference. We had a lot of turnovers on offense, the guys played hard but they were just not as sharp as they had been in practice.”
Though the basic rules for the exhibition were the same, there were some minor deviations from a standard prep game with most of them coming on the defensive side of the line.
“Offensively you could do just about anything except have an empty set. You had to have at least one back in the game,” Sawyer said. “On defense you could not blitz and teams were not allowed to have more then five guys on the line of scrimmage.”
West 6 3 0 13 — 22
East 0 0 0 7 — 7
W — Josh Dula 73 yard punt return (kick blocked) :27
W — Patrick Smith 41 FG :00
W — Kurt Odom 4 run (kick blocked) 9:01
W — Kevin Jeter 4 run (Smith kick) 7:02
E — Adrian Scott 10 run (Harvey kick) 3:35