Pursley and Capps make peace
For those who follow high school football in the area, last week's clash between Western Alamance and Northeast Guilford produced a great game, as expected. What followed the game, an ugly exchange between two of the area's best and most respected football coaches, was not expected.
And, to their credit, Northeast's Tommy Pursley and Western Alamance's Hal Capps did not allow the hard feelings to fester. Pursley said he didn't call Capps directly because he was afraid the coach would hang up on him. Instead, he asked Western AD Carter Gerlach on Monday about setting up a meeting to hash out their differences. A sitdown, as they'd call it in Sopranos world. Coincidentally, Capps had asked Gerlach the same thing. Really, they each wanted to apologize for the misunderstanding.
So the coaches got together later Monday for about 10 minutes.
The controversy: The Warriors, up 21-14, threw a wide-open pass on 2nd-and-6 from Northeast's 29 with 1:40 left. They scored easily as the Rams expected QB Donald Britt to simply take a knee 2 or 3 times. Pursley told Capps after the game he thought it was a "low-class" move. After cooling off over the weekend, he realized he was probably in the wrong about Western's intentions.
"To me, it was sort of a slap in the face is how I took it," Pursley said today. "And obviously that’s not how he meant it. He was showing us respect by scoring. He thought if he gave us the ball back it could be like two years ago, and we’d come down and beat them."
So Pursley apologized. Capps, too, said he was sorry if it appeared to be a piling-on situation.
Did he fear Northeast would get the ball back and, even with less than a minute to go, march down and tie or win the game?
"Exactly," Capps said today as his Warriors prepared to face Bartlett Yancey and likely improve to 9-0.
Northeast (5-2) is home to Morehead tonight. The finish shouldn't be nearly as stressful.