Brevard Football Wins Conference Championship

by Jacob Miner with reporting from Collin Frady

In recent years, Brevard High School’s football program hasn’t had much to celebrate about. They definitely had a reason to celebrate on November 4th, 2016, a day that will go down in Brevard football history forever.

On November 4th, the Brevard Blue Devils were set to take on the Pisgah Bears. Before the game Brevard had a very respectable 8-2 record while Pisgah was undefeated at 10-0. Going into the game the Blue Devils knew the challenge they had ahead of them.

Pisgah stopped Brevard on their first drive due to miscommunications and bad passes. As soon as they got the ball, the Bears drove down the field and scored a touchdown quickly to put them up 7-0.

The next drive the Blue Devils gave the ball to senior Jesse Lowery and he scored a 41 yard rushing touchdown, and after a missed extra point the Devils were down just 7-6.

All the momentum went to the Blue Devils as they caused the Bears to go three-and-out their next drive. As soon as the Blue Devil offense got the ball back, senior Tanner Pettit had a run of 56 yards, and the following play resulted in a 31 yard touchdown pass from senior Tanner Ellenberger to senior Nick Cabe.

Going into halftime, the Blue Devils had all the momentum going their way, but Pisgah bounced back scoring on their first drive to get back ahead of the Blue Devils 14-13.

The game was a great defensive battle, as it was not a high scoring game. Late in the third quarter, Senior Samuel Kicklighter drilled a 25 yard field goal and put the Blue Devils up 16-14.

Several drives went by and the Blue Devil defense was not giving up and continued to stop and make big plays against the Bears. They batted down a pass off of a fake punt attempt on fourth down giving Brevard possession of the ball with 7:00 remaining.

Ellenberger took the offense down the field converting on multiple third down situations and sealed the game with a 16 yard touchdown pass to junior Ari Williams which put the team up 23-14 with under 3 minutes to play.

The Bears had great effort fighting back into the game but could only get a field goal on their last drive making the score 23-17. Their only chance was to get an onside kick and score in 45 seconds. The onside kick was played very well but they couldn’t recover as the ball went out of bounds.

The Blue Devils got the ball, kneeled it, and sealed the game. For the first time since 2007, the Brevard Blue Devil Varsity Football team had got their share of a Conference Championship.

Winning the Conference Championship in front of their home crowd on senior night capped off the amazing regular season their football team has had.

Ellenberger finished with a game high 253 passing yards and two touchdowns, in his final regular season home game of his career. Senior Tanner Pettit finished with 106 yards rushing, and senior Nick Cabe finished with 86 yards receiving and one touchdown. The Blue Devil’s stepped up their game and proved they can play up to the competition in the most important game of their high school football careers. 

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