A broken play broke the hearts of Trinity Christian School's football team on Friday night against North Georgia in the semifinals of the Independent Christian Schools of Georgia and Alabama state playoffs.
Leading by a point with under a minute in the game, North Georgia scored a go-ahead touchdown on a broken play when one of its running backs was bottled up by Lions defenders, only to pitch it back to his quarterback in a 38-31 victory that eliminated North Region champion Trinity Christian from the ICSGA playoffs.
On its home field at East Coweta Middle School, Trinity Christian jumped ahead 31-22 on a 12-yard run by Clint Karr early in the fourth quarter, only to see North Georgia, the No. 3 seed from the North, rally back for 16 unanswered points to win the game.
"It's a tough one, that's for sure," said Lions head coach Matt Schock. "We really would have liked to have gone to that championship game."
Trinity Christian finished its second varsity season with a record of 9-2 and now will make the move to the GISA next year, most likely joining a region including The Heritage School and Arlington Christian.
Despite losing its two outstanding senior running backs in Karr and Andrew Dennis, who combined for four touchdowns on Friday, the Lions will return the majority of their lineup from this season in 2010 including quarterback Camryn Clark.
"Really we lose two really good running backs," said Schock. "But just about everybody else will be back."
Trinity Christian went to halftime at McKnight Field trailing 14-8 despite a go-ahead score by Karr to open the game. But coming out of the break, Dennis scored from 25-yards out on the Lions opening series of the fourth quarter, and the ensuing 2-point conversion regained a 16-14 lead.
Dennis then added to the advantage, scoring on a 40-yard touchdown to make it 23-14, only to see North Georgia run back the ensuing kickoff to cut the gap to 23-22.
Karr's final touchdown gave Trinity Christian breathing room again, but North Georgia scored to again close within one point and then forced a Lions punt with 3:12 to play to set up a final drive.
"They put together a good drive on us," said Schock. "It was a fluke play."
