Every athlete dreams of having a chance to win the game as time expires. That’s where Palm Beach Central found itself after Vanguard’s wide receiver Kemohn Pinkney took a 28-21 lead with 55 seconds left to go in the game.
The Broncos didn’t bat an eye as they took the field to mount their comeback. Less than 48 hours ago head coach Kevin Thompson forced them to dig themselves out of a hole in practice. It’s the reason why the Broncos are enjoying their 4-hour bus ride and 29-28 win over Vanguard.
“We practice the situation every single day in practice,” Palm Beach Central head football coach Kevin Thompson said. “We literally have a situation. If I show you our scout or a practice script right now, it says, it’s a thing called 55 seconds. Literally, have 55 seconds to score, get a field goal or PAT or something. And we practiced that on Wednesday and it showed up today. Everybody’s been through before, you know, you practice for what you want, and, you know, they execute it perfectly.”
Paln Beach Central may have come into Booster Stadium as an under-.500 team but it’s the best team Vanguard’s played since Buchholz in Week 1.
Despite a loss, this was the pre-playoff tuneup the Knights needed. It was their chance to play a lauded south Florida football team. Competing with talent they see in less than three weeks when games matter most. Even if it resulted in giving up more points in one night than they have all season.
“These kind of games are going to make you better,” Vanguard head football coach Edwin Farmer said. “You’re going to need to learn from them or you’re going to continue to have the same mistakes. It’s one of those things where you got to just go back to the drawing board and get better. You know, we made too many mistakes. That’s what I’m going to tell you.”
The Knights didn’t lay down as the Broncos executed their game plan. They were the first to throw a figurative punch at their opponents.
The Broncos answered back with a flurry of their own. No blow hit harder than Antoine Perry’s big plays in the second half. The 5-foot-7 wide receiver’s Megatron-like catch over defenders on the final drive put Palm Beach Central in scoring range.
“Perry, he’s been hard to find,” Thompson said. “Sometimes he’ll do, like, amazing things, and then he’ll just disappear from us. But the stuff you saw today is what we’ve like, we’ve been trying to get him to understand that, like, you can’t just be one of the dudes. You can’t just be a guy that comes out and runs her up. Like, you have to be him.”
It’s been six weeks since Vanguard has fallen on the wrong side of the win column. The crestfallen bunch will need time to emotionally recover from this loss. That starts Sunday in the film room.
What comes from that meeting could fuel them down the stretch of the season. It’s exactly what they need to refocus on their goals.
“When you’ve got a team that goes out, plays hard every Friday, win every football game, we compete. It isn’t like we didn’t compete. We definitely competed. They don’t like to lose, which is good. They don’t like to lose.“
This article originally appeared on Ocala Star-Banner: Who came out on top of Vanguard vs Palm Beach Central? The final 55 seconds decided
Reporting by Allen Pettigrew Jr., Ocala Star-Banner / Ocala Star-Banner
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
