Mary Montgomery, Golson to ‘keep chopping wood’ after shocking 54-0 loss to Thompson

 

By JIMMY WIGFIELD

ALABASTER — Mary G. Montgomery coach Zach Golson had just suffered his worst loss since changing the Vikings from everybody’s favorite homecoming opponent to a respected and even feared program but he preferred to look ahead, not behind.

He paid tribute to a superlative senior class that went 37-10 — the best four years in school history — and made MGM a state contender. But as a humbling 54-0 loss to six-time state champion and No. 3-ranked Thompson showed on Friday night, the No. 6 Vikings have a lot of ground to make up to win a Blue Map.

“I hate it for our seniors and for our kids that we didn’t put them in enough good positions and didn’t have them quite ready to go tonight,” Golson said. “But for us to be standing here relevant … and I think we got (Thompson’s) best effort tonight and that’s part of why they played so good. It is a testament to our kids, our coaches, everybody involved. The progress we’ve made in four years has been really cool to see. And I think we can continue to continue to build on it.”

The Warriors are difficult to compete with for a multitude of reasons, Golson said while scanning over their opulent facilities.

“You can look around here and see there’s still a lot of work to be done,” Golson said. “Hopefully, we can continue to get the investment from the people in our community. I think that there’s a desire to want to see it done like this. We’ll just keep chopping wood until then.”

Golson also said Thompson is a national brand.

“You’ve got kids moving from Katy, Texas, from Oregon, from Hawaii, that want to come play here,” he said. “That’s a challenge in itself to be able to compete with something like that.”

The Hawaiian-born Trent Seaborn came to the mainland U.S. when he was 9 and eventually settled in Alabaster, where as an eighth grader he quarterbacked the Warriors to the 2021 Class 7A state championship. Two more have followed since then and a seventh might come in December.

Seaborn, who has committed to Alabama, quickly extinguished any notions MGM could beat Thompson, going 14-of-15 passing for 259 yards and four touchdowns — all in the first half — in the 54-0 victory in the quarterfinals of the Class 7A playoffs at Warriors Stadium.

The Warriors’ 21^st straight home playoff victory put Thompson (9-3) in the Class 7A semifinals at No. 1-ranked Central-Phenix City (11-1) next Friday.

The Warriors inflicted a night of unexpected misery on Mary Montgomery (10-2), which came into the game with the third-toughest defense against the score in Class 7A. Unfortunately for the Vikings, Thompson’s defense was ranked first and showed it, physically swallowing MGM up front.

“The way we played is not what I expected,” Golson said. “I thought we could have made a better run at this group just because of the experience that our team had going into it but they jumped on us and when you get behind a team like that, it’s hard to play catchup. They created so many explosives early and it was 14-0 and we were struggling to get first downs.”

Seaborn enjoyed the second half on the bench after staking the Warriors to a 41-0 halftime lead. They scored on eight of nine possessions, stopped only by Seaborn’s lost fumble to Mary Montgomery linebacker Devin Pettway near the end of the first half.

“He’s one of a rare, rare breed,” Thompson coach Mark Freeman said of Seaborn.

Golson could see early on that his defense was no match for Seaborn, who needs just 1,375 more yards to become the state’s all-time leading passer. With 9,650 yards and 98 touchdowns and averaging 267 yards per game in his junior season, Seaborn would set the record before midseason next year.

“Seaborn, man, he’s incredible,” Golson said. “The throws and catches they were making were first-class. He had time but he’s throwing in rhythm and throwing to a spot and he’s hitting it. We got behind and I think we were spinning a little bit, not getting calls, one guy’s off — and when you’re one guy off, that guy (Seaborn) is going to find it. Just hats off to them. They played a great game.”

Seaborn threw TD passes of 5 yards to Pryce Lewis, 56 yards to Darion Moseley, 8 yards to Urijah Casey and 5 yards to Trey Knight. Seaborn also scored on a 1-yard run, R.J. Evans scored on a 3-yard run, backup quarterback Jahari Nation thew a 22-yard scoring pass to Mathew Bevelle and Jafari Pegues scored from 22 yards out.

“Football is a chess game,” Seaborn said. “Sometimes you’ll win some plays and sometimes you won’t win the other plays. Tonight, we were able to win a lot of those plays and make the right moves that ended up clicking. We knew they were gonna have a pretty good defense, especially with the record they had. But our whole line came out with a different mentality tonight and I was really proud of those guys. They came out hitting and that’s all you can ask for.”

That offensive line gave Seaborn plenty of time to read the defense, not that he needed it, and find receivers in space.

“They make it clean for me and make it easy for me and then my receivers go make plays,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Warriors held the Vikings to 12 yards rushing in the first half and 91 for the game, 145 yards below MGM’s average.

The Vikings got inside Thompson’s 30 only twice and one of the threats ended when defensive back Damonte Tabb intercepted MGM quarterback Jeremy Menhennett and ran it back 40 yards to set up Evans’ 3-yard TD run late in the first half for a 41-0 lead. The Vikings converted just 3 of 14 third downs.

“Our defense played really good,” Freeman said. “If we play defense like that, you check the record books, we’re a pretty good football team.”

Golson said the Warriors’ size and range were too much to overcome.

“Their D-line, their box, was a real problem,” he said. “I think their length, their length in the secondary — they were longer than even what I kind of expected from film.”

Thompson had 398 yards of total offense to MGM’s 213 and, incredibly, scored 54 points in just 17:51 of possession time. Their scoring drives were 55, 42, 56, 47, 47, 38, 54 and 71 yards.