Shootout, thanks, my favorite was that one hopped long-snap that the holder just nonchalantly fielded, set-up for the long FG. Man Venice looks good on O.
Got a Venice Story. This occurred the week after we beat Manatee in Bradenton (Brion Carnes and Ace Sanders) for the first time since 1949. It was my youngest son's Sr Year, with Alex Mut (USF) and Mike Bellamy (Clemson for a drink of coffee). Venice has Trey Burton and Dri Archer, two NFL bound athletes.
My son is a Slot / TE and had Mono, so they're nursing him all week because they need him to play. On Friday morning, an attractive Doctor at the local clinic (Also happened to have been a Tarpon cheerleader in the 1960s) checks him out and clears him to play My wife wants to be really sure, so makes me ask our friend, also a Tarpon Cheerleader from my years who has a PhD in Nursing, to palpitate him to see if his spleen was enlarged - she agreed it wasn't. I learned during mono they worry about it bursting with contact . Our trainer saw it happen in wrestling.
Venice kicks off, stopped us and scored first. My son was an upback on the receiving team and a hands guy. Bink didn't want to chance him getting hit like the week before when he fielded a late onside kick from Manatee. Trust me, if he had an enlarged spleen then, that hit would have discovered it. So anyway Venice scores he's not on the field and damn if they don't pooch kick it to this kid who was in for him, who quite frankly didn't know what to do. They recover and the route was on.
Now I always wondered if one of their coaches upstairs noticed that on the initial kick-off or if it were coincidence. But man did it work. They beat the dog snot out of us, won the district.
Then we get them in the second round. Now Archer was hurt, but Trey and his guys still had a two possession lead late in the 4th. My youngest caught a huge 3rd down pass from Kyle Midgett (some Venice photographer took a great shot of him going up between three Venice defenders) and Bellamy scored on a 12- yard trap a few plays later to get us within shooting distance. We make a stop and they have to punt. Troy McClary dips to field it (they forever claim his knee was down -wasn't) and returns it 85 yards for the lead with 2 minutes left in the game. Trey was a heck of an athlete, but generally only threw to the middle of the field, we held that two minutes and shocked the heck out of them. Historic year for Charlotte beating both Venice and Manatee.