Published: November 01, 2009 01:02 am      

GCS wins TAPPS six-man showdown

DALLAS — Nick Nelson outleaped a Dallas Covenant defender to haul in a 41-yard touchdown pass with 1:04 remaining and then booted the conversion to give Greenville Christian School a 30-28 victory in a showdown of the top two rated six-man football teams in TAPPS Division I.

GCS was trailing 28-22 and had just converted a fourth and one on its 34 when Nelson won a one-on-one battle with a Covenant defender to bring in Jake Schumann’s touchdown pass in the end zone.

“When he had to he made it,” said GCS coach Larry Uland.

Nelson didn’t have any time to celebrate because the No. 2 ranked Eagles needed his conversion kick to knock off the No. 1 Knights. Nelson drilled the kick right down the middle.

Dallas Covenant, which suffered its first loss of the season against eight victories, gave the Eagles a late scare by driving from its 20 to inside the Eagles’ 10-yard line in the final minute. Facing a third and 11 from the Eagles’ 14 with only seconds remaining and no timeouts left, Covenant running back Austin Martin dashed seven yards to the GCS 7-yard line.

Covenant quarterback Trevor Miller then tried to stop the clock by spiking the ball on fourth down as time ran out. The officials conferred, then backed up Covenant five yards for an illegal procedure call, ruling that the Knights weren’t set before the spike. The officials gave the Knights one more play with 0:00 showing despite the protests of the GCS coaches who wanted to decline the penalty but were not given that option.

The GCS defense then stopped Martin again for a 2-yard loss and this time the officials signaled that the game was over.

“I was really happy with the way our kids hung in there at the last,” said Uland, whose Eagles improved to 8-1 for the season and 2-0 in district play. “This was a very emotional game for both sides.”

Both teams produced some big plays on offense and defense.

Covenant’s Michael Hendricks scored all four of his team’s touchdowns on a 12-yard run, a 34-yard pass from Miller, a 65-yard interception return and a 29-yard pass from Miller, who was 6-of-16 passing for 135 yards.

Schumann, who was 10-of-21 passing for 191 yards, had a hand in all four of the Eagles’ touchdowns. The returning all-stater threw two touchdown passes to Nelson, including a 4-yarder in the second quarter and the game-tying touchdown with 1:04 left. Schumann also connected on a 48-yard touchdown pass to Andrew Wombaker and returned a fumble 20 yards for a touchdown on defense with 1:30 left in the third quarter.

GCS forced four turnovers, including two fumble recoveries by Schumann, one fumble recovery by Wombaker and an interception by Nelson.

GCS lost two fumbles, one on an onside kick and the other on a run to the Covenant 4-yard line.

“We had some flutter balls and we had some great throws,” said Uland. “We had some drops but we had some good catches. We missed some blocks and we had some good blocks. Defensively, we played pretty darn well. To hold the Knights to 20 something points was exceptional.”

Uland also noted some of the big plays made by the Eagles’ kicking game, including Nelson’s three conversion kicks, one more than the Knights made and that would be the difference between the two highly-rated teams who will probably meet again in the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools’ Division I playoffs.