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“The last game we lost was a great high school football game in that we catch the ball, our kid splits in the end zone, but the ball never crossed the plane,” Eastern Alamance coach John Kirby said. “The official made a great call and the game ends up, we’re that close to possibly tying the game or possibly winning the game.”
The Eagles concluded the abbreviated campaign with a 6-2 record, both losses coming to Western Alamance. Five of Eastern Alamance’s six victories in the spring of 2021 came by a margin of two scores or more, including an opening round state playoff victory at Rocky Mount.
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“I think it’s more mental,” senior Kasen McCawley said. “We were just that much too short, and that’s not physical, that’s mental and wanting to get into the end zone. We obviously wanted it a whole lot less than they did.”
The unsettling feeling from those two losses remains for this group of Eagles, eager to elevate their play a bit further as they attempt to “find a way” in a sport with razor-thin margins.
“Every year, we come up with a hashtag. It’s our keyword, our buzzword. This year, it’s ‘find a way.’ Find a way is, last year, we lost two games to Western Alamance,” Kirby said. ”Our thing this year is find a way, because we got to find a way to make it happen. We got to find a way to get it in the end zone. We got to find a way to to make an A (in class) or we got to find a way to do what we got to do to make our school proud.”
There’s been plenty of time for the Eagles to reflect on why things went awry in that final game as they attempt to calculate a winning formula for a new season.
“I think it goes back to last summer or whenever we were starting to work out,” senior linebacker Jake Libbey said. “It's like, what could I have done better in the weight room? What could I have done better on the practice field? It showed in our last game. It showed in our regular season, at times.”
It’s about squeezing out every last bit of juice and executing at a high level to get the job done in pivotal situations.
“To find a way, we have to learn how to preserve because there will be challenges that we face this season,” senior linebacker Will Burnette said. “There will be fourth downs where we got to (get a stop). There will be fourth-and-goals where we got to get in the end zone. I think with the coaching staff that we have, with the players we have and with the attitude that we have, we have a good head on our shoulders and we want to win, so we’ll always find a way to.”
Eastern Alamance's Carter Stallings (31) and Cole Jordan (45) celebrate after bringing down Roxboro Person quarterback Ridge Clayton.
Burnette, Libbey and Joey Teixeira make up the Eagles linebacker corps, which figures to be a strength for the Eagles.
“As sophomores, Joey and Will were two of the best side-by-side linebackers that we've ever had in school history,” Kirby said. ”Joey didn’t get to play (in the spring of 2021) and Will gets hurt early (this preseason), and it’s like, ‘Holy cow. They may have played their last game together as a sophomore.’ Will’s pretty excited about (Teixeira) being back. Joey is a great player.”
Burnette, a three-year starter, suffered a knee injury in the preseason that will sideline him for at least the first handful of games. While guarding a receiver at an Eastern Alamance camp, Burnette fell and hyperextended his knee, resulting in a fractured tibia plateau, he said. Doctors also discovered Burnette had a torn meniscus, believed to have occurred during his sophomore season in 2019.
Initially, Burnette was told he may have torn his anterior cruciate ligament, which would sideline him for the entirety of his senior season. A second opinion revealed otherwise.
“I was so relieved,” Burnette said. “I was in tears when they told me my ACL might have been torn because it’s my senior year.”
Kirby said he’s hopeful Burnette can make his senior season debut when conference play opens in Week 6 as the Eagles play host to Western Alamance.
“I have it circled on my calendar,” Burnette said. “I’m just ready to play football. They were a great team last year and they’ll be a great team this year.”
Teixeira returns to the lineup after sitting out the 2021 spring season.
“It’s huge,” Burnette said. “Joey was the leading tackler sophomore year. We were sophomores and he had 205 tackles. That’s insane. That’s unheard of as a sophomore. I’m more than happy to have him back at the Will backer position beside me.”
In Teixeira, the Eagles regain more than just a tackling machine.
“This is a guy that during baseball season, they had a hole full of snakes and they were trying to get the game started and he was pulling the snakes out and throwing them in the lake,” Kirby said.
Eastern Alamance opens the season Friday night at Eastern Randolph, where hopefully the wrangling will be limited to players, not reptiles.
David Kehrli is a sports reporter at the Burlington Times-News and USA Today Network. You can reach him at david.kehrli@thetimesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidKehrliTN. Subscribe to the Burlington Times-News here.
