Year in review: football

Published 2:57 pm Friday, December 31, 2010

The past two high school football seasons saw a team from Pike County end the season with a championship.

And while 2010 saw none of the teams finish on top, it did see something that had not happened in two years.

For the first time since 2008, all four football teams in Pike County advanced to the postseason.

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For Pike Liberal Arts, Goshen, and Pike County, these were all consecutive trips to the second season, while Charles Henderson joined the big dance for the first time since 2008.

Coming into the 2010 season, PLAS was looking to cap off a third-straight season with a championship trophy.

However, for the first time since 2007, the Patriots suffered a loss in the playoffs to the hands of Monroe Academy, who had beaten them earlier in the season.

The three losses PLAS endured this past season was the most since 2007, and this season was also the first time in two years the Patriots finished with less than 10 wins.

Even though the team did not get its third championship, it still had a dominating performance, as it scored 400 points against its opponents, while only giving up 177 points.

Between the Trojans of Charles Henderson and the Bulldogs of Pike County, the rivals have a combined 40-playoff appearances, 61 playoffs wins and six state championships.

One thing that separates the two teams is its head-to-head matchups.

And just like the past two seasons, it was the Trojans who came out on top in the annual rivalry exhibition game.

That win helped propel the Trojans to a 6-5 overall record, but what helped out CHHS even more was the play of one of its seniors.

Many have graced the orange and blue jerseys, but none had ever had the season that Corey Dennis had.

The Trojan signal caller finished as the first CHHS player ever to finish a season with 1,000 or more yards passing and rushing in the same season.

For the fourth time in as many seasons, the Pike County Bulldogs were going into a season with a new coach.

Former Carroll High School head coach Robert Johnson was tapped to lead the charge for the Bulldogs in early 2010 and the coach did just that, getting PCHS into the postseason for the fourth-straight season.

However, for the third year in row, the Bulldogs fell short of expectations, losing in the first round.

Coming into the 2010 season, expectations in and around the Goshen football team were high as ever.

The team was coming a 2009 season that saw it advance to the second round of the playoffs, after the program had been playoff-less for the better half of a decade.

Thanks to the legs of running backs Marcus Jackson and Reginald Foster, who each rushed for over 1,000 yards, the Eagles found themselves with another milestone for the program in 2010, thanks to its nine victories.

This was the most wins an Eagle team had had in a season since 1991, when that team won 11 games.

Even though Goshen’s season came to an abrupt end in the first round of the playoffs, the team finished with the most points scored in the county with 479 points.