GREENWOOD — Third-ranked Greenwood’s reserves played more than a half Friday as the Bulldogs rolled to a 44-12 victory over St. Louis Lift For Life Academy.
The Bulldogs (2-0) built a 37-0 halftime lead to invoke the sportsmanship rule’s continuously running clock throughout the second half.
But the game at Smith-Robinson Stadium served a purpose for both coaches. Greenwood’s Rick Jones gotan extended look at reserves while getting a breather before a nationally televised game next week at Shiloh Christian.
Rory Seals got to show his Hawks (0-3) what a successful high school program looks like as the St. Louis charter school embarks on its first varsity season.
“Our goal and our vision is to be a big-time program,” Seals said. “What better way than to see not only a bigtime program, but a program that started at inception that wasn’t big time?
“I played at Arkansas-Pine Bluff, and I know Greenwood was not a big-time program in the mid-1990s.”
The Bulldogs have been one of the heavyweights in Class 5A during the past decade.
Greenwood dominated Lift For Life, holding the Hawks to 49 yards offense while piling up 416. Senior quarterback Stephen Hogan played about 1 1 /2 quarters, completing all four of his passes for 103 yards and two touchdowns.
“It’s not your opponent; it’s you,” Jones said. “This was ‘get better’ week. We had to get better because we knew if we didn’t improve on our performance last week we weren’t going to be where we wanted to be. We took a step forward.”
Sports, Pages 26 on 09/11/2010