Ryan Callahan

A crushing 20-18 loss at District 3-A opponent Harriman might have cost the Greenback High School football team a shot at reaching the Class 1A playoffs this season.

Still, it was hard not to be impressed by the Cherokees on Thursday night.

Greenback (2-3, 0-2) reeled off 18 consecutive points to erase a two-touchdown, second-half deficit against the Blue Devils (3-1, 2-0) and take an 18-14 lead on Shawn Petty’s 67-yard touchdown run with 8:59 remaining.

The Cherokees’ fumble on a direct snap to Petty in the closing minutes allowed Harriman to pull out the victory on Dimitrique Inman’s touchdown run.

But as recently as two weeks ago, it would have been difficult to envision Greenback climbing out of a 14-point hole in any game, particularly against a likely playoff team like the Blue Devils.

The Cherokees opened the season with an ugly 26-6 loss at Class AA Meigs County. Then, after rebounding with a 24-13 win over Pigeon Forge in their home opener, they were on the short end of a 32-0 shutout in their district opener at Rockwood.

First-year Greenback coach Justin Ridge’s revamped offense, which has included a few pistol formations, struggled to move the ball. The Cherokees’ defense at times seemed almost incapable of making stops.

To his credit, Ridge believed his relatively inexperienced team was better than it looked at the time.

“That’s not us,” Ridge said after the Sept. 4 loss to Rockwood.

He apparently was right.

The Cherokees bounced back last week with a 48-14 rout of winless Sweetwater before pushing Harriman to the brink of an upset last night.

Against the Blue Devils, Greenback consistently moved the ball throughout the second half. Petty finished with 160 rushing yards, and fellow running back Ernie Stinnett added two touchdowns.

The defensive front also proved capable of slowing down Harriman’s productive running game and talented skill-position players.

Greenback now faces an uphill battle to make the playoffs coming off an 11-2 season last year under former coach Brent Kilpatrick. Two of the four Class 1A teams in the six-team District 3-A will qualify for the postseason, but Harriman and Grace Christian Academy appear to be the early favorites for those spots.

A wild-card berth also seems unlikely, unless the Cherokees manage to win four of their last five games and finish the regular season with a 6-4 record.

If nothing else, though, Greenback on Thursday looked like one of the area’s most improved teams since Week One.

That’s a good start.

Robbie Irwin only was trying to be helpful when he volunteered to fill in briefly as a scout-team running back during one of the William Blount High School football team’s practices last week.

He had no idea it would end up causing such a problem.

The starting senior running back was diagnosed Monday with a dislocated left shoulder, an injury he unknowingly played with last week in the Governors’ 38-35 home victory over winless Jefferson County.

Irwin still doesn’t expect his shoulder to hold him back Friday night, when William Blount (2-2, 0-1 District 4-AAA) visits new district opponent Knoxville Catholic (2-1, 0-1) in a long-anticipated showdown with former Govs coach Scott Meadows.

“I can do no further injury to it, now that they’ve got (the shoulder) back in,” Irwin said Tuesday.

“The only injury I can do now would be to do the same thing to it. And if I don’t land exactly the way I did, I’m not going to do the same thing to it. It’s just a matter of me being able to tolerate the pain.”

Irwin, who has accounted for more than 200 yards of total offense this season, said he was injured on a collision during a midweek practice last week.

He had stepped in as a scout-team running back during a team drill when no one else was available.

William Blount’s second-leading rusher this season behind quarterback Zach Witt, Irwin said he felt pain shoot through his shoulder at the time of the injury but had no idea how serious it was until he had it checked out Monday.

He expected to wear full pads for Wednesday’s practice after being held out Tuesday.

Irwin wore a shoulder stabilizer Tuesday, when he did some light running on the side during practice, and said he would wear the nearly unnoticeable brace Friday night.

Alcoa High School athletic director Josh Stephens confirmed Thursday afternoon that the Tornadoes football team’s District 4-AA opener at Loudon will be played as scheduled at 7:30 p.m. Friday.

Alcoa City Schools canceled classes for the final three days of the week because of widespread illness among students, but Stephens said not playing a district football game — or even postponing it — was not an option.

One of Alcoa’s non-district girls soccer games was called off earlier this week, Stephens said, but the football team has not been affected by the illnesses.

The annual high school football showdown between Maryville and Alcoa brought out a smaller-than-usual crowd this year.

An estimated crowd of just more than 7,000, Alcoa athletic director Josh Stephens said Thursday, watched the Tornadoes end the Rebels’ eight-game series winning streak Friday night with a 41-24 victory at Alcoa’s Goddard Field.

Stephens said it was “a little bit smaller” crowd than the two teams drew in 2007, the last time Alcoa hosted the game.

Speculating on a reason for the decrease in attendance, Stephens suggested extensive rainfall that caused flash flooding in the area Thursday night might have kept some fans from coming to the game.

A forecasted chance of rain Friday night during the game couldn’t have helped, either.