Cedar Ridge Football

It was 65 degrees when Cedar Ridge kicked off its 2019 high school football season.

And that was far from the most unusual thing Saturday.

But back to weather for a moment….65 degrees on opening day? This is North Carolina high school football in mid-August. You’re supposed to sit in the hot late afternoon sun with humidity thick enough to make you beg for your next breath.

Yet by the end of the day on Saturday, it seemed appropriate. Why should the weather on August 24 make any sense when nothing else in the game did either?

Teams aren’t supposed to commit seven turnovers and still win. But Carrboro did. A football fan can go years between watching their team give up two safeties. On Saturday, there were two within three quarters, including the opening snap of Cedar Ridge’s season.

On a muddy, rain drenched day, Carrboro defeated Cedar Ridge 24-18 in the Red Wolves’ first varsity football game since 2017. After not fielding a varsity team in 2018, the Red Wolves returned in a game that was more mud ball than football.

It was Carrboro’s first win over the Red Wolves since 2015. Carrboro (1-0) senior quarterback T.K. Paisant scored the Jaguars’ only touchdown in the first half on a five-yard keeper around right end. Paisant was also the Jaguars’ leading tackler as a linebacker.

Despite being statistically dominated for much of the first half, the Red Wolves still had a drive to potentially win the game late. Senior wide receiver K.J. Barnes had the longest play from scrimmage of the day with a 73-yard catch-and-run from sophomore quarterback William Berger, who was one of many Red Wolves making their varsity debut.

“We had more than K.J. show up today,” said Cedar Ridge Football Coach Torrean Hinton. “We had Jaikel Gibbs show up today. We had a lot of kids in the interior that fought hard. Braxton (Mergenthal) fought extremely hard. We fought all the way to the end.”

Gibbs, a junior who started for Cedar Ridge’s basketball team last year, had an interception and a fumble recovery in the first half.

The tone for the wet and wild afternoon was set early after Carrboro punter Robert Allen pooched a kick to the Cedar Ridge 3-yard line, the first of nine Red Wolves drives to start inside its own 20-yard line. Berger watched the first snap of Cedar Ridge’s season sail over his head and out of the end zone for a Carrboro safety, two points that the Red Wolves spent the rest of the day chasing.

“To play from behind the whole game, and still have a shot in the end, you can’t ask for more than that.” Hinton said. “We obviously have to cut down on mistakes and turnovers. Some of them were influenced by the conditions, but some of them weren’t.”

Carrboro ventured into Red Wolves territory on its first four possessions, but couldn’t muster any points. Early in the second quarter, Gibbs picked off a Paisant pass, only to have Carrboro’s Anthony Mudrow make his own interception two plays later.

That led to Paisant’s 5-yard touchdown run. The subsequent attempt for 2-points failed and Carrboro led 8-0 with 5:46 remaining in the first half.

Cedar Ridge, still without a first down, went three-and-out on its next drive, but Gibbs recovered a fumble off a muffed punt return at the Carrboro 31-yard line. After running back Isiah McCambry chewed up eight yards on a 3rd-and-7, Berger found Brandon Poteat for a 14-yard touchdown pass to narrow Carrboro’s lead to 8-6.

Cedar Ridge botched a punt snap on the first possession of the second half, leading to Paisant finding Anthony Muldrow for a 32-yard touchdown pass with 9:38 remaining in the 3rd quarter.

The subsequent Cedar Ridge drive could have ended early, but Carrboro was hit with two penalties (personal foul and pass interference) on consecutive third downs. McCambry pushed into the red zone with a 14-yard run, then scored his first varsity touchdown on a 3-yard gallop. Cedar Ridge’s attempt for two failed to keep the Carrboro lead at 14-12.

Carrboro backup quarterback Jake Adams found Tim Rogers-Neal for a 37-yard touchdown pass on the first play of the fourth quarter. In the only successful point after touchdown of the day, Adams found Muldrow for a two-point conversion to push Carrboro lead to 22-12.

Two plays later, Berger hit Barnes for the 71-yard score to narrow Carrboro’s lead to 22-18.

The final six minutes didn’t have any scoring, but it sure wasn’t boring. With a chance to take the lead after a Carrboro punt, Cedar Ridge fumbled and Braden Hunter recovered at the Red Wolf 12-yard line.

On a 3rd-and-7 from the Cedar Ridge 8-yard line, Paisant threw a pass that went off the helmet of Red Wolf linebacker Braden Thompson and was caught by Muldrow at the 1-yard line. Right on cue, Carrboro (you guessed it) fumbled the snap, which was recovered by Elijah Whitaker in the end zone.

Starting from its own 20, Cedar Ridge promptly fumbled another snap in the end zone. McCambry raced back and beat Paisant to the ball for another Carrboro safety instead of a Jaguar touchdown, increasing the Carrboro lead to merely 24-18 and still giving the Red Wolves a fighting chance.

On the subsequent free kick, Carrboro fumbled and Cedar Ridge’s Matthew Hinton recovered. On the next play, Carrboro’s Rogers-Neal picked off his 2nd pass of the game.

Cedar Ridge had the last possession to take the lead, but it stalled out at its own 38-yard line as time ran out.

“We have to be better and fine tune some things,” Hinton said. “We’ll get better.”

The return of Cedar Ridge varsity football has been pushed back a day.

On Friday afternoon, the Cedar Ridge-Carrboro football game was postponed until 4 o’clock Saturday afternoon. Cedar Ridge Athletic Director Andy Simmons confirmed the game will be played to benefit both teams’ schedules.

Cedar Ridge is scheduled to have its off week on August 30. But Carrboro is slated to face East Chapel Hill next week and won’t have an open date until late September. By that point, Cedar Ridge will already be in its Big 8 Conference schedule.

Hillsboroughsports.com will have coverage of Carrboro at Cedar Ridge starting at 3:45 on Saturday afternoon for the C&R Ski Outdoor Pregame Show. Kickoff will be at 4.

It may not be the majority in Orange County, but there have been a lot of people waiting for tonight in Hillsborough, White Cross, Efland and even Mebane.

It’s’ been 735 days since the Cedar Ridge varsity football team has won a game. It came against Carrboro at Red Wolves Stadium.

Whether that’s an omen for tonight is up for the reader to decide, but Carrboro will visit Hillsborough again tonight with a 30% chance of rain in the forecast.

But what’s transpired between the Red Wolves’ last triumphant moment on the gridiron and tonight has tested the Cedar Ridge community, led to the departures of two head coaches, and incurred the wrath of Cedar Ridge parents toward the Orange County School System, including recently departed Superintendent Todd Wirt.

The sport of football, still the most valuable fuel that keeps the engine of high school sports pumping, had a existential crisis locally last August. The Friday nights in Red Wolves Stadium were never as solemn as they were in 2008, when Cedar Ridge didn’t field a varsity team.

When the Orange County School System made the announcement in June 2018, it caught many by surprise, not the least of which head coach Scott Loosemore, who departed for an assistant’s job with Scotland County soon afterwards.

After the district’s announcement, submitted in a Tweet, tensions boiled over the following Monday. School officials curiously scheduled a town hall meeting at Cedar Ridge cafeteria to discuss the future of football at 6:30 PM. It just so happened that the Orange County School Board met at Gravelly Hill Middle School at 7PM that same night, making it impossible for parents who wanted to sound off to both then-Principal Heather Blackmon and Superintendent Wirt (who was at the board meeting). The timing of the two meetings was no coincidence, and it only served to deepen the divide when several parents drove to Efland to give school board members (none of whom had any role in canceling the varsity season) a piece of their minds just as the meeting was finishing.

Several school board members stayed well after the session ended to listen to concerns, but some of the exchanges were hardly civil.

All of that is now in the past, but it wouldn’t be a Cedar Ridge football training camp without some adversity. On July 29, moments before the Red Wolves were ready to start its first practice, head coach Antonio King informed Athletic Director Andy Simmons he was leaving to become a running backs coach at North Carolina Central University.

The following morning, Torrean Hinton was barely awake when he received a phone call inquiring if he would be interested in become varsity coach. He accepted.

For seniors like wide receiver K.J. Barnes, Braedon Thompson, Braxton Mergenthal, Jaikel Gibbs and Zachary Holmes, tonight’s game isn’t just about trying to win.

Just as Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote that “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive,” this Cedar Ridge team can achieve something without winning.

They can start a healing process for an athletic program that’s been overwhelmed with coach and player defections for the past year. None of that can be solved in one night.

But the bottom line is Friday nights are back at Cedar Ridge.

The Red Wolves will travel hopefully tonight.

And not a moment too soon.

It’s been a long time coming for Cedar Ridge football, but finally on Friday night they will play its first varsity football game since 2017 against Carrboro. Interestingly, the last time Cedar Ridge won a varsity football game, it was against Carrboro to start the 2017 season. The game was shortened by lightning and ended early in the third quarter. Phillip Berger was the quarterback of the Red Wolves that night. On Friday, he younger brother William will start behind center. Among Berger’s main targets will be wide receiver Brandon Poteat, who will be able the top playmakers for Cedar Ridge this season. Hillsboroughsports.com will air Friday’s game starting with the pregame show at 7:15.