Stories from Friday, October 9, 2015

It's not always déjà vu all over again. The Forrest Middle School Rockets are living proof as they exorcised last year's disappointing 14-12 loss to Community in the Duck River Valley Conference Tournament game that ruined an undefeated season. FMS would not budge this time versus Liberty, staving off every Patriot comeback attempt with the resiliency of champions that resulted in a hard fought 24-14 DRVC title game win, capping off a perfect 9-0 season.

Part of Vols' success rides on former Tiger's kicking foot

Under the new Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association's playoff system, 32 teams from each football classification will make up the field that will begin post-season play on November 6. The Forrest Rockets (6-1, 4-0) are in the drivers seat in Region 4-AA, holding down first place and can clinch the top spot with wins in two of its last three games.

The Marshall County Tigers finished in third place at the Region 6A-AA Tournament at Montgomery Bell on Monday, two shots behind second place Stewart County and 38 shots behind defending champion CPA. "I was happy with the team performance. We were only five strokes worse than district, but Montgomery Bell is a much more difficult course," MCHS coach Alex Phelps said. "I would have loved for one of my other three guys to shoot just a couple strokes better and us finish second, but those are my young guys and it was a great experience for them."

The Forrest Lady Rockets finished off the regular season with a bang, blanking non-conference Webb School 3-0 in Tuesday night's senior celebration at Chapel Hill. "I'm really happy, I was nervous coming in," senior Anyssa Strong said. "I was just glad we on our last official home game here." Forrest (6-3-1, 3-0-1) is the top seed from the South Division in the upcoming District 9A-AA Tournament that commences at 6 p.m. Monday night on the Lions Club Memorial Field at Chapel Hill.

The Lady Bulldogs (8-7-1, 5-4) traveled to Williamson County to take on top dog of District 11 A/AA Fairview (14-1-2, 10-0) for the regular season finale for both squads. Despite the record and prestige of the Yellow Jackets, the vastly improved Lady Bulldogs hung around for the entire game before losing 6-0 in a game in which the score was not indicative of the closeness between the teams.