While some may think of a turnover as a sweet pastry treat, to football coaches turnovers aren’t sweet at all, and they’re anything but a treat.
In the Camp Verde football team’s homecoming game against Sedona Red Rock on Friday, Sept. 27, both Cowboys’ coach Steve Darby and Scorpions’ coach Rick Walsworth had to swallow more than their share of turnovers, and it’s certain that neither much cared for the taste.
The Cowboys fumbled the ball away twice and threw two interceptions in a 15-13 homecoming loss to the Scorpions, who totaled four turnovers as well.
But Darby stood up to put the blame on himself.
“It’s important to be able to pass, even if it’s short passes, to open it up, otherwise you get eight, nine guys right in the box and it makes it hard to run,” Darby said. “But we’re not very good at passing the ball, and it seems like every time we try we get an interception.
“And that’s one of my faults — we were running well and we should have never thrown.”
But while many of the turnovers could be justified as simply the product of a hard-hitting game between cross-valley rivals, what ultimately decided the game was a special teams error by the Cowboys that resulted in a safety.
After fighting to a 13-13 draw for 31/2 quarters, the Cowboy defense stopped a long Scorpion drive at the Camp Verde three-yard line. But the Cowboy offense was unable to gain a first down and were forced to punt from their own 11-yard line. The long snap sailed out of senior punter Tyler Dickey’s reach, and although Dickey did a nice job of recovering the ball and punting it, several Scorpions players had already swarmed in to block the kick, and it landed out of the back of the end zone.
“The bad snap on that punt killed it,” said Cowboys senior Alex Tapia immediately after the game. “I think if it wasn’t for that we’d be in a neck and neck game right now and we’d still be going at it.”
For the full story, please see the Wednesday, Oct. 2, issue of the Camp Verde Journal.
