Blountstown has won all five of their scheduled games this season and will be hosting Sneads.
Patricia Smith
Gadsden County News Service
Last week the Sneads Pirates varsity football team traveled to Liberty County for a game of football with the Bulldogs. The much-anticipated Friday night lights turned into a cloudy event of consistent rainfall that challenged the athletes to their fullest potential.
The Pirates took the first two scores of the game into the endzone, and the halftime score was 14-0. The third quarter took a drastic change when the Bulldogs quickly snagged a touchdown in retaliation and made it known they were ready to fight for the win. The score stayed at Pirates 14 and Bulldogs 7 all the way through to the fourth quarter.
Twelve minutes left in the game, the pressure is up, it is raining, and anything that could go wrong for the Pirates did. The officials blew their whistles, threw yellow flags, and announced a variety of penalties, most of which were called against the pirates. Both teams received unsportsmanlike conduct rulings on different occasions, but the Pirates took a harsh penalty of 30 yards around the time the chain crew had to be switched out on the sidelines causing a bit of confusion for the officials and they seemed to overlook a mistake that Coach Thomas tried to explain.
“We had a 2nd and 8. We gained five yards but had a dead ball foul which would have made it second and seventeen,” Thomas said. “It was raining pretty hard, and they had to trade chain crew during the game. I tried to explain the mistake to the official, but it is what it is.”
It was a tough game night for the Pirates. They ended up losing the game by one point, but they will utilize it as a learning experience and work towards focusing on discipline, “We had three offsides on our defense, three holding calls, and an unsportsmanlike penalty,” Coach Thomas said. “Those were all penalties that we should have avoided but we were undisciplined. As coaches we must work on becoming a more disciplined fb team. It ultimately falls on me as not having my team more disciplined.”
Thomas has been coaching at Sneads for 13 years and the last two years have been close call game endings.
“The last two times I’ve taken a team to liberty we have lost one-point games,” Coach Thomas explained. “I’m not sure of my exact record at Liberty’s field. I know we lost my first year here. We went for a couple of years without playing. We won there in 2018, 2020, and in 22. We lost there in the playoffs in 22.”
The Pirates had a few moments where they recovered the ball during the second half and surely could have made at least one more touchdown if it had worked out, “I was disappointed in the fumble in the red zone that we recovered and were not rewarded and then the fumble on the onside kick that we recovered that we were not rewarded. After watching the film, I’m not sure what they saw. It seems on film we clearly get on the ball, and we came up with it both times without a struggle. I’ve always been pleased with Quincy officials. Most of them work very hard to get the game right. Sometimes you get new guys put on a veteran staff and no one is perfect. We should have played better football than those plays would not have mattered at all.”
Coach Thomas went on to say good things about the Liberty County rivals, “The Liberty County community loves their school and their teams. It will always be a tough place to play.” Liberty County won last Friday night’s game 21-20. They are scheduled to play against Wewahitchka this week.
Sneads Jarvis March, a junior representing the #9 for the Pirates, suffered an injury to his front right shin. He is doing well and hopes to return to playing ball soon. Before his injury took place, March was able to make 5 tackles and 3 assists. Two of those tackles were solo.
The Pirates will be back on the road this week traveling to Blountstown with Darneilus J. Holmes, a newly transferred student athlete from Gadsden County High School who will be playing with the team for the first time. Next week will be their first home game in three weeks. They will be hosting the Jefferson County Tigers.
