Talk about sweating one out.
The Liberty County Panthers reclaimed the Commissioners Cup, holding on for a 21-20 Saturday morning as Bradwell Institute’s go-ahead field goal try went wide left with less than a minute to play in the season opener for both.
Persistent lightning forced postponement from Friday night till Saturday morning, and by the game’s end, temperatures at Donell Woods Stadium/Kirk Warner Field were in the mid to upper 90s. Liberty’s win was its first in the series since 2022.
“We had to be resilient,” Panthers coach Tony Glazer said. “We had a lot of adversity. But it’s football. You have to keep playing. We were able to play physical the whole game. That was a good football team, but we found a way to be one point better today.”
Liberty led 21-7 before the Tigers scored two touchdowns in less than five minutes to cut the lead to one. Bradwell got the ball back with 3:50 remaining in the game at its own 46-yard line. The Tigers reached the Panthers 12 before Christian Hines and Harry Stevens teamed up on a sack of Jah’barri Felix.
On fourth and 8 from the Panthers 10, the Tigers opted to kick, but the attempt wobbled wide left with 49.2 seconds to go.
“We bowed our necks and got a stop when we needed to,” Glazer said.
The Panthers struck first late in the first quarter. After a Tigers put pinned the Panthers at their own 5, Elijah Brown took a handoff over the left side, made a cut and then outraced the Bradwell defense for a 95-yard touchdown run. The try for two points failed, leaving Liberty with a 6-0 lead at the 2:10 mark of the first quarter.
Brown, named the game’s outstanding offensive player, finished with 200 yards rushing.
Liberty pushed the lead to 14-0 when Rashaud Woods pounced on a bad punt snap in Bradwell’s end zone. Montavius Johnson ran in the two-point conversion.
The Tigers answered, going 54 yards in six plays, as Wade Cobb scored from 9 yards out with 3:10 left in the first half. Liberty, which ran 20 plays in Bradwell territory in the first half, responded in kind, as Jaeir Roberts threw a 30-yard touchdown pass with 39.8 seconds to play in the first half.
“It was almost a tale of two halves,” Glazer said. “We played really well in the first half – that’s the football team I want to see. The second half, we relaxed a little bit.”
The Panthers first possession of the second ate up more than six and a half minutes and got to the Tigers 17 before turning the ball over on downs. A roughing the passer call wiped out a potential interception, keeping Bradwell’s drive alive.
“Those are things we need to clean up to be the football team we want to be,” Glazer said.
A running into the kicker penalty, followed by an offsides, gave the Tigers a fourth-down conversion. Two plays after Felix’s 55-yard scoring strike to Jacobi Pasley was wiped away on a holding call, Pasley hauled in a 50-yard bomb from Carlito Savea to set up the Tigers. Camerson Keeve scored on an 11-yard run, but Liberty blocked the extra point, leaving the score 21-13 on the final play of the third quarter.
Bradwell got closer on Cobb’s 2-yard run with 7:18 to play, and the extra point drew the Tigers within 21-20.
Even with the steamy conditions more suited for two-a-day preseason practices, Glazer noted that injuries were minor, other than a handful of players on each suffering from cramps.
“It just shows the condition and weight program both schools have done to play in these elements,” he said.
Bradwell will host Westover on August 22 and Liberty is off until August 29 when it hosts Windsor Forest in the Region 3-AAA opener.
“The bye week couldn’t come at a better time,” Glazer said. “We’re going to have a light week of practice next week.”
There was no dumping of a water bucket or Gatorade bucket on Glazer at the game’s end, though the coach gladly would have accepted either on a day with brutal conditions.
“Gatorade would have been a little sticky,” he said. “But I would have taken it.”
