East-West All-Star Game

I heard West won 40-0. Anyone seen a box score?

 

Here is the story from Ihigh

Good times for West All-Stars
July 21, 2005, 09:07 AM
By Steve Hanf
High Point Enterprise

GREENSBORO - Rick Vanhoy said he wanted options for Wednesday night's East-West All-Star football game. The head coach of the West squad got everything he asked for and more in a near-historic rout witnessed by 7,405 fans at Grimsley's Jamieson Stadium.

Option quarterbacks Alex Good and Bo Williamson each ran for first-half touchdowns, Daniel McEntyre added an electrifying punt return and Anthony Levine returned a fumble en route to a 40-0 blowout for the West team. Good finished with 18 yards on 12 carries in his final game representing Southern Guilford. Williamson, from Cummings, earned the bulk of his 70 yards with a 57-yard scoring dash to end the first half.

"A lot of kids that weren't part of an option offense, they weren't sure if we'd be able to score any points or move the football," Vanhoy said. "Alex, everyday we would sit down after practice and talk and he'd say, 'OK, it'll come, they'll see it.' It just came together."

Good got the start for the West and struggled early as both offenses tried to find a rhythm. McEntyre's 62-yard punt return, featuring an ankle-breaking move from the Polk County product on West Carteret punter Matt Dodge near the goal line, seemed to energize his team at the 7:28 mark of the second quarter. That play, along with a few big pass breakups, earned him MVP honors.

After a safety on a bad punt snap made it 9-0, Good led a drive into East territory that culminated in his 7-yard scamper to the corner of the end zone. That made it 16-0 with 1:51 remaining before halftime.

Williamson appeared content to kill the clock when he started running at a slow pace on the final play of the second quarter. He saw an opening down the right sideline and accelerated, then juked one defender and dragged two others into the end zone for a 57-yard back-breaker.

"We were roommates (during the week) and it was a pleasure to play with Bo. We both have the same style," said Good, who is heading to play at Carson-Newman while Williamson stays close to his Burlington home to play at Elon. "Once I got one, I knew he was going to want one."

The second half opened with Levine's 18-yard fumble return that made it 30-0 with 9:55 showing in the third quarter. Harding's Jamelle Cuthbertson added a 4-yard run to make it 37-0 entering the fourth quarter. The record for margin of victory was the West's 41-0 win in 1954.

Ben Hartman, a North Davidson product heading to East Carolina as an invited walk-on, did his part for the cause. He boomed five kickoffs through the end zone and connected on four extra points, including two from 35 yards out after penalties. His 38-yard field goal provided the final three points at the 4:08 mark. He also averaged 42.8 yards on four punts, hitting a long of 60.

"They say it's supposed to be a defensive game, and I was looking to punt a lot more than I did," Hartman said before being asked if all the action made him tired. "Oh, yeah! I don't think I've ever kicked this much in one night."

 

Greensboro News & Record...

All-Star classic mismatchch
Cummings grad helps West gain rare blowout
By Keith Tolbert, Special to the News & Record

GREENSBORO -- There was a fireworks show at halftime of the East-West All-Star Football Game, but Bo Williamson had provided the spark a few minutes earlier.

Williamson, a Cummings graduate, scrambled for an electrifying 57-yard touchdown run as time expired in the first half giving the West a 23-point lead. The West went on to a 40-0 win, the second most lopsided victory in East-West All-Star football game history.

With less than a minute to play in the first half, the West took over on the 42-yard line. After a penatly and a short gain, Williamson dropped back, but immediately cut up field. He got to the sideline and had three defenders to beat inside the 10. After faking one, he carried the other two into the end zone from the 2-yard line.

"The coach told me at the beginning (of the series) to run the clock out," Williamson said. "But I saw some daylight so I just took off. I was real excited to score in an All-Star game. I didn't really expect to score, but I knew it was a possibility."

West coach Rick Vanhoy from South Rowan had to install two offenses. The West ran a wing-T when Southern Guilford's Alex Good was playing quarterback. But for Williamson, who passed for 3,600 yards as a senior, Vanhoy set up a spread offense with Williamson in the shotgun, his preferred set.

After a couple of dropped passses and a couple of overthrows, Williamson didn't have much to show for the his playing time in the first half, until his big run. The West used that momentum to score two more times in the third quarter and put the game away.

It was probably the last time Williamson will play quarterback. He is slated to play wide receiver and defensive back at Elon University this fall.

"It was a great way to end my career as a QB," Williamson said. "It (college) will be different because I'm so used to playing quarterback. But I played wide receiver as a sophomore so I should be OK."

While Williamson's run was probably the most exciting play of the game, the West defense forced two fumbles, both recovered by Winston-Salem Reynolds linebacker Anthony Levine. The last one he returned 18 yards for a touchdown.

Northwest Guilford's Garrett Carter played most of the game at linebacker and said the West was prepared for the East's wing-T after practicing against the West offense all week.

"The big thing on our defense was communication," Carter said. "Because the wing-T has a lot of misdirection, the linebackers worked all week on reading the guards. It was the biggest game of my career."

W--Daniel McEntyre 62 punt return (Benjamin Hartman kick)

W--Team safety

W--Alex Good 7 run (Hartman kick)

W--Bo Williamson 57 run (Hartman kick)

W--Anthony Levine 18 fumble recovery (Hartman kick)

W--Jamelle Cuthbertson 4 run (Hartman kick)

W--Hartman 38 FG

 

Ed Hardin's column: If football is to reign, it will start here

GREENSBORO -- The summer doldrums were interrupted Wednesday night by a shrill whistle and the classic summer sounds of football. And then the sounds of football were interrupted by the classic summer sounds of fireworks and screaming girls. Somehow, it all fit.

July in North Carolina is a special time in a special place. We go to the beach. We go to the mountains. We go to the lake and the river and the campground and the fishing hole, and one night out of the month, we go to a football game.

Or some of us do.

Several thousand of us, 7,405 to be exact, went to the East-West All-Star Game at Jamieson Stadium to watch this year's all-stars play football, right in the midst of all our other activities and sporting events native to this time and place, events like baseball and swimming and track and field.

Football in July has been more a passing fancy than a passion, though the size of the crowd at Grimsley High School suggested that might be changing. The 57th all-star game was a little different than the 56 that preceded it.

We're in the early days of a new era of football in North Carolina, and no one knows what it means yet and no one even knows if football will ever matter to us the way other sports do. But times change, and the NCAA basketball trophy that seems such a permanent hood ornament here in North Carolina might actually end up somewhere else for a long, long time. Stranger things have happened.

What will the ever-changing landscape of sports look like then? We know baseball is on the wane. It has been for decades. We know basketball is on a downturn. We've seen enough of the NBA now to form an educated opinion. It's sucking the life out of the college game, and it's been terrible for years.

Golf ebbs and soccer flows, and racing continues to leave us further behind. Only football gets stronger, and only football's growth includes everybody. We played high school football Wednesday night. This weekend, the ACC introduces its final football program, Boston College, when the conference coaches meet at The Homestead, and next week the Panthers open their training camp in Spartanburg.

Football season started this week with the West's 40-0 victory, and it started here in Greensboro.

The game began in sweltering conditions, but the weather broke without the aid of thunder or lightning and the West team provided entertainment in the first half, which preceded the halftime fireworks.

A huge crowd squeezed into Bob Jamieson's stadium, and a large crowd watched from Bob Jamieson's fence high above the field. People from all over the state converged at the geographic center of North Carolina and watched a football game in the topographic center of North Carolina sports.

Those sports have always been recognizable to us, and they've always followed seasonal patterns -- baseball giving way to summer and summer grudgingly to football before basketball consumes us all.

The all-star games here have always been a respite from that order but little more. We once attracted more talent and occasionally attracted larger crowds, but then the college game would disappear on the college campuses.

Football season began Wednesday night just as it does in places like Florida and Texas and Ohio and Pennsylvania, places we associate with a game we've never been associated with. There are those who believe that is about to change, and there are those who believe it will change at the college level.

But that might take a while. Before the college game can flourish in North Carolina, football will have to find its place in the summer sun and under Friday night lights on high school fields across the state.

If this is to become football country, games like our annual all-star game will be a seminal event. College coaches know that, or they'll learn it the hard way, and eventually they'll ease up the restrictions on rising freshmen playing in this event. That's the only way it will work.

This has never been a football state, and it never will be until we realize what will make it so is not the fledgling football factories in Raleigh or Chapel Hill but the high schools that feed them.

Football in July is not a bad thing at all.