COFFEETOWN HS SPORTS

Coffeetown had a full head of steam at Otter Springs in the Copperheads’ High School Football season opener.

And then they didn’t.

The Copperheads were hot under the collar after their team bus rolled over dozens of ten-penny nails on the way in.

Players had to walk a mile just to make it to the game in time for kickoff. Temperatures reached the low 90’s in pregame, and several Copperheads offensive linemen required IV bags before they even had pregame warm-ups.

While some Cofffeetown players got gassed, others used it to gas up for the game.

“It fueled me bruh I ain’t gonna lie. No cap that heat was bussin even though we wasn’t for real,” Tailback Walton Masterson told me after the game.

The setback was just the launching pad for a major performance from Masterson, who went for 322 yards and three touchdowns in the game.

He was a lone bright spot in an ultimately frustrating evening at Otter Springs.

Coffeetown had a 19-14 lead at half that went up in smoke after head coach Cliff Swansea got ejected for arguing with officials multiple times.

“I lost my cool. The bus thing just kinda set me off. There are some rumors out there that an Otter Springs team dad threw them out there in our path and our boys just deserve better all the way around. I am giving myself 100 bear crawls in front of the team as punishment.”

Any spectator at the game can hardly blame Swansea.

The officiating crew blew a blatant offensive pass interference call that led to Otter Springs’s first touchdown.

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Then the crew – which is a union crew in Otterton City – left at halftime since its collective shift was over.

“I don’t want to blame the refs or nothin’ because we was out there doin’ our thing. Ballin’, grindin’, ya feel me,” Masterson said.

“But I can’t lie they sucked.”

Otter Springs put an exclamation mark on the win in a late onside kick from Coffeetown’s Chip ‘Shot’ Kaminski.

The Otters’ Dale Jones found a crease in the exhausted Copperheads’ hands team, and took it back to make the score 42-22 with three minutes left in the game.

Officiating and unfortunate pregame circumstances wore down Coffeetown before and during this season opener, but the Copperhead Standard knows no excuses.

Coffeetown will try to get back on track in week two, in the Copperheads’ home opener against Grass Central High School.