If any single play could sum up McCallie's 42-3 season-opening victory at Chattanooga Christian School on Friday night, it may have come with 4:12 to play in the second quarter, the Blue Tornado already on top 28-0.
At that moment, McCallie quarterback DeAngelo Hardy hit fellow senior Jay Hardy (no relation) for a 17-yard touchdown, with the tight end flattening Chargers sophomore defensive back Ralph "Raif" Montgomery as he crossed the goal line.
For Jay Hardy, a high-level Division I prospect being courted by Alabama and Tennessee among others, it meant his second touchdown catch of the game.
For Montgomery, who gave up more than 100 pounds to the 6-foot-4, 285-pound Hardy, it probably meant the end of the season.
"They think it's a torn ACL," CCS coach Mark Mariakis said of Montgomery's knee injury. "But that's his character. He'll do whatever it takes to try to win the game."
If there was any small victory for the Chargers, it was that they finally scored against the Blue Tornado for the first time in three meetings, with junior Erick Manirakiza booting a field goal with 30.2 seconds left in the contest.
"Chattanooga Christian is continuing to improve," said McCallie coach Ralph Potter, whose team beat the Chargers 55-0 two years ago at McCallie and won 21-0 last season on this same David Stanton Field in a game called at halftime due to a violent thunderstorm. "But we were really disciplined tonight. Defensively we adjusted well."
It will always be an adjustment for CCS, a TSSAA Division II-AA team, facing a DII-AAA power such as McCallie. It won't get any easier for the Chargers next week when they visit Baylor.
Yet as good as the Red Raiders - who open the season Saturday night against Brainerd - are expected to be, they aren't likely to provide a more difficult defensive test for CCS than McCallie. Blue Tornado junior tailback B.J. Harris rushed for 114 yards and four scores, and DeAngelo Hardy ran for 83 yards and passed for 127 yards and two touchdowns in a game that had a running clock the entire second half after McCallie took a 35-0 lead into halftime.
Keenly aware his quarterback had offseason surgery to repair his throwing arm, Harris said: "Teams can't stack the box on us anymore. They've got to respect the pass. And the line is doing a great job blocking for us."
The next team that will have to respect the pass against the Blue Tornado will be Knoxville's Webb, which visits McCallie next Friday night.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.