By Erik Harris
GARDENDALE – If speed does indeed kill, then Hewitt-Trussville wide receiver Noah Igbonoghene needs to be caught and locked away for a long time.
The junior put his straight-line speed on display early in a 39-34 win at Class 6A No. 10 Gardendale on Friday night. After Rockets’ quarterback Zach Cupps gave the home team a 7-0 first quarter lead, Igbonoghene delivered a momentum swing that sent the Huskies into the break with a 21-7 advantage.
“We made some big plays in the pass game early, which I think helped us out,” Hewitt-Trussville head coach Josh Floyd said.
Senior signal caller Zac Thomas found the speedster on the third and fourth drives of the night, lighting the scoreboard and starting up the band. The first connection came in play-action fashion when Thomas looked left to find a wide-open Igbonoghene from 40 yards out. Only a few minutes later the pair delivered a 72-yard streak down the sideline that gave Hewitt-Trussville its first lead of the game.
“(Igbonoghene) is one of the fastest kids in the state of Alabama,” Floyd said. “He’s a special player, special talent and he’s just going to keep getting better and better.”
Thomas finished with four touchdowns (one on the ground and three more through the air) on the night. He also went 13-for-26 through the air for 223 yards.
Following all the early flash, the Huskies’ offensive front took the game into its own hands as the game wore on. Brandt Selesky, Ben Adams, Zachary Moode, Kyle Miskelley and Chipper Lartigue paved the way for Hewitt-Trussville ball carriers to take home the first win of the season.
Behind those road grinders Hewitt-Trussville ball carriers churned out 352 yards on 60 attempts. In total, Floyd’s offense sped its way to 86 snaps for 557 total yards through a Tebow-esk performance by Thomas.
“(The offensive line) did a great job,” Floyd said. “Our O-line was really strong tonight. In the third and fourth quarters we ended up having to run the football to win the game and our O-line came through.”
The surge that big front consistently got made defensive stops hard to find for Gardendale, especially in the later minutes of the contest. The Huskies converted nine of their 16 third down conversions.
“I felt like we executed for most of the game,” Miskelley said. “When we first came out we struggled a little bit, but we found a way to get the job done.”
Although the Rockets kept things interesting with explosive offensive plays, Hewitt-Trussville claimed the night by putting points on the board on its final three drives of the night.
Freshman Parker Colburn split the uprights from 30 yards out to break a 21-all contest on the first play of the final quarter.
After a defensive stand, Thomas rolled right and placed the ball in the hands of Garrison Garner on a fourth-and-three from the Gardendale five-yard-line. That pitch and catch increased the Huskies’ lead to 32-21 with 7:34 remaining.
Despite the bleak circumstances, Cupps and the Rockets kept making plays. He applied pressure all the way to the final horn. Cupps delivered a strike to Blake Zumbado, who was streaking down the seam for a 29-yard score to update the scoreboard to 32-27 in favor of the Huskies with 5:56 remaining.
Hewitt-Trussville’s SEC-bound running back Jarrion Street would eventually put the game out of reach with a powerful dash that started on the Gardendale eight-yard-line. He broke through multiple arm tackles to increase the lead to 39-27 with 3:14 left in the fourth.
Street carried the ball 26 times for 192 yards and the back-breaking touchdown.
The Huskies begin Class 7A, Region 3 play next Friday night when Tuscaloosa County visits Hewitt-Trussville Stadium.