Russellville football team gets Homecoming win over Ardmore
The Russellville Golden Tigers celebrated their Homecoming with a 38-7 region football victory over the Ardmore Tigers Friday night.
RHS (4-1, 3-0) got another standout performance from one of the top players in the state. Junior running back Cam Phinizee rushed for 325 yards on 27 carries and scored two touchdowns. Phinizee now has 1,385 rushing yards for the season. Russellville outgained Ardmore 408-208 in total yards, and the Golden Tigers’ defense held their opponent to 85 yards rushing for the game.
Ardmore took the opening kickoff Friday and held the ball for 14 plays until the RHS defense made a big stop on fourth down. Russellville then took over and put together a scoring drive that finished with an 11-yard touchdown pass from Whit Goodwin to Javan Poss. The first of five successful extra-point kicks during the contest by Manny Martinez made the score 7-0 with 1:49 remaining in the opening quarter.
The Golden Tigers led 14-0 when Goodwin scored on a quarterback keeper for a 10-yard touchdown with just over five minutes left in the first half.
The second half began with a Russellville drive that produced a 36-yard field goal by Martinez to grow the advantage to 17-0. Ardmore followed with a long pass on first down on the next possession to set up their only score of the night, which came on a four-yard touchdown pass on fourth down.
RHS quickly answered with four running plays by Phinizee, and the last rushing play of the drive resulted in an eight-yard touchdown run by the back to make the score 24-7. A backward pass that was recovered by Russellville’s Daniel Aycock stopped the next Ardmore scoring threat.
The Golden Tigers later added fourth quarter scores on a 21-yard touchdown pass from Goodwin to Poss with 7:23 to go in the contest and a 16-yard touchdown run by Phinizee with 5:57 left on the game clock.
“We know that we can play a lot better,” Russellville head coach Dustin Goodwin said after the win that included a large number of penalty flags. “Way too many penalties and definitely stuff to clean up going into next week. You never take winning for granted, and we’re very grateful that we were able to pull it out and fix some things in the second half.”
RHS will use the upcoming off week on the schedule to prepare for the next game, a big one versus the Fairview Aggies at home on Oct. 4. Fairview is 4-0 on the season after a 28-25 win at Lawrence County, and the Aggies are tied atop the region standings with Russellville.
“You just don’t want to lose momentum,” Goodwin said about the upcoming week without a game. “We’re going to come in and get some days of good work and address the issues that we’ve got, and that’s what we’ll do going into next week.” Fairview also has a week off after wins over Springville, Ardmore, West Point and Lawrence County this season.
