Shelby County’s season comes to a close in final home game against Woodlawn

Published 11:06 pm Thursday, October 27, 2022

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By LAUREN SEXTON | Sports Reporter

COLUMBIANA – The Shelby County Wildcats finished their season on Thursday, Oct. 27 in their senior night game against the Woodlawn Colonels. The Wildcats lost to the Colonels 31-7 in the final non-region match-up.

When you make those mistakes that’s the mark of a young football team,” Shelby County head coach Zeb Ellison. “It’s hard to overcome those things. These kids are gonna go learn from it, they’re gonna grow. We’ll come back a lot stronger next year. The future’s bright here.”

Shelby County has been deeply affected by the string of injuries the team has accumulated throughout the course of the season and they added one more torn ACL to the list Thursday evening.

The Wildcats’ defense managed to keep the score low throughout most of the first half. Shelby County trailed only three points behind Woodlawn going into halftime after a successful field goal in the three remaining minutes of the first quarter.

There was a lot of potential for the Wildcats within the second quarter of the game with a fumble recovery and an interception. Shelby County recovered Woodlawn’s ball on the Wildcats’ 2 yard-line and freshman Cade Joiner successfully intercepted the Colonels’ balls, however, they were unsuccessful in getting points onto the scoreboard.

Shelby County’s defense began to wear down into the second half of the game. The Wildcats’ defense continuously halted any action for Woodlawn in the red zone throughout the first half, but the Colonels found much more successful drives into the second portion of the game.

Woodlawn managed to get two touchdowns in the third quarter, one field goal kick was successfully blocked by the Shelby County defense.

The Wildcats did get one touchdown by Cole Sykes on the scoreboard early into the fourth and final quarter of the game. Not too shortly after Shelby County’s touchdown, Woodlawn got one final touchdown of the evening.

Despite Shelby County’s best efforts and their defense within the first portion of the game, the Wildcats fell to the Colonels.

“We started out with a lot of promise and had some injuries that we just couldn’t overcome,” Ellison said. “We have a lot of young kids on the defensive side, have four freshmen starting offensive side, three or four sophomores mixed. We are an extremely young team. Our kids are playing extremely hard and I’m proud of the way they play.”