Clarke County coach Jason Massey (in blue) shakes hands with Leroy coach Chan Lowe after the Bears whipped the Bulldogs 41-12 Friday night in Grove Hill. It was the first meeting between Lowe and Massey, his mentor for many years at Leroy. (Josie Pittman/Call News)
Leroy quarterback Jace Sellers delivers a pass against Clarke County Friday night in Grove Hill. Sellers was 13-of-19 passing for 183 yards and two touchdowns in the Bears’ 41-12 win. (Josie Pittman/Call News)
By JIMMY WIGFIELD
GROVE HILL — There was a time in the not-so-distant past when Chan Lowe was asked if he’d like to be his own boss some day and coach against his longtime friend and mentor, Jason Massey.
“He’d beat the dog mess out of me,” Lowe said without hesitation.
And that was just after Lowe had replicated Massey’s 2022 state championship by winning a Blue Map of his own in 2023 while serving as the Bears’ interim coach with Massey 7,000 miles away in Iraq on deployment with the Alabama National Guard.
Lowe went on to become Leroy’s permanent coach while Massey found a mouth-watering opportunity at Clarke County and, as fate would have it, Lowe had a chance to test his theory Friday night when the Bears came to town.
Perhaps Massey taught Lowe too well because while Lowe is now 0-1 in prognosticating, he is 1-0 against the man to whom he owes so much.
Jace Sellers completed 13 of 19 passes for 183 yards and two touchdowns, Ja’Kavien Collins added two touchdown runs and Leroy’s starting defense allowed only minus 5 yards of total offense in the second half as the No. 2-ranked Class 1A Bears routed No. 10-ranked Class 2A Clarke County 41-12 at H.G. Prim Stadium.
Massey, in the first year of his rebuild of the Bulldogs, helped continue Leroy’s championship tradition only to get trampled by it Friday night.
“Getting your butt whipped ain’t enjoyable but I love those guys over there,” Massey said. “I coached all of them and with those coaches and I wish them all the luck from here on out. They play hard and they do things the right way.”
Massey allowed that the Bears looked like a typical Leroy team except now they’re the Air Bears, throwing it more than they have since the days of Clint Moseley and Sammie Coats. And while Clarke County has won four straight region championships, Massey is installing new systems and instilling new discipline.
“It’s a work in progress,” he said. “But I believe in our kids and we’re going to come back to work on Monday and get ready for next week.”
Lowe, whose team never punted, knows he took advantage of Massey putting the pieces of his program together in their first meeting.
“We’re both going to do it the same way,” Lowe said. “I think he’s got it going in the right direction. If they just trust Jason and follow him, this program will be fine.”
They seemed fine in the first half, trailing just 20-6 at intermission, but the Bulldogs (0-2) lost a fumble and took a loss on a fumbled punt snap to give Leroy (2-0) short fields at the 24 and 39 that resulted in touchdowns in the third quarter and ceded control of the game.
After the game, Lowe was so displeased with the way his team performed in the first half that he grumbled loudly about what he felt was some conceit coming out of the season-opening 52-34 win over Thomasville, in which backup quarterback Sawyer Sullivan passed for 342 yards and three touchdowns.
“We go up there, play really well against Thomasville and then kind of roll in a week of practice thinking, hey, everybody’s going to give you whatever you want,” Lowe said. “That’s not going to be put up with. We’re going to do what I tell them to do or else.
“I wasn’t very happy in our efforts,” he said. “I thought we played pretty poorly coming out. We did some things we shouldn’t have. We got a couple of penalties that cost us some yardage there and gave them good scoring position. We busted coverage. I thought we did a lot better job in the second half. Defensively, I thought we played well.”
Sellers, the usual starter who missed the Thomasville game with an elbow injury, threw TD passes of 20 yards to Josh Reed on a hitch in the first quarter and 48 yards to a crossing Jacory Yelder in the second. Despite that, Lowe was in no mood to celebrate at halftime.
“We didn’t have a great week at practice,” Sellers said. “He came in at the half and got on all of us and told us to do our job.”
Although Sullivan played superbly in the opener, Lowe felt he owed Sellers the start against Clarke County.
“I thought he did some things good and I thought he did some things not so good,” Lowe said. “He threw it well enough and we’ll just keep getting better from here. … We’ve got a really good tailback crew with Ja’Kavien and Keegan Giles but we also have a great receiver corps with Josh Reed and Cory Yelder and Ayden Tolbert. We knew going into it people were probably going to load the box on us because we are so good in the backfield and we ran it so well that it just opens up the passing game.”
Collins had 71 yards on 11 carries and scored on runs of 1 yard and 7 yards in the third quarter, when the Bears scored 21 points in 3:52.
“They’ve got a really good football team,” Massey said after a handshake with Lowe on the soggy field that lasted as long as an eyeblink. “They’ve proved that definitely a couple weeks in a row. And they got a lot of experience, a lot of kids that’s played in some really big football games. And we’ve got a long way to go on our end but we’re going to get there.”
Leroy drove just 26, 48, 24 and 39 yards for four of its six touchdowns. Tim Parnell, the Bears’ star defensive lineman, scored on a 1-yard run after a 71-yard, 12-play drive in the second quarter and Tolbert scored on a 27-yard sweep in the third.
The Bulldogs got TDs on a 24-yard pass from Peebo Pugh to Jayvion James in the second quarter and Omarrion Hammond’s 2-yard run against the Bears’ backups late in the game.
Leroy outgained Clarke County 298 yards to 154, although the Bulldogs held the ball for 29:09 to the Bears’ 18:51.
