‘It absolutely does not get old.’ Mountain juggernaut adds to championship legacy.
Belfry, a school synonymous with football excellence, found itself in the rare position of “underdog” on Friday night. It lived up to its tradition.
The Pirates, ranked fourth in its class in the Herald-Leader’s Rating the State by Dave Cantrall and No. 7 in the KHSAA’s RPI, never trailed in a 30-20 victory over unbeaten Bell County, the No. 1 team in both rankings, to win the UK Orthopaedics/KHSAA Commonwealth Gridiron Bowl Class 3A championship.
BOX SCORE: Belfry 30, Bell County 20
Belfry won its seventh state championship (first since 2016) and improved to 7-7 overall in finals appearances. It was the 449th victory for head coach Philip Haywood, Kentucky’s all-time wins leader and under whom the Pirates have won all of their titles.
The first one — a 33-27 come-from-behind victory over Elizabethtown in 2003 — holds a special place in Haywood’s heart partly because of how it was decided: future UK standout David Jones scored the game-winning touchdown on a fourth-and-goal rush in overtime after teammate Paul Howard came up with an interception to keep Elizabethtown from scoring on the first possession in the extra period.
State championships never get old, though.
“It absolutely does not get old,” Haywood said. “People ask me that all the time and I say, ‘Man, this one’s as good as any.’ They’ll probably never be nothing like that first one, cause of the drama and everything that went with it, but this one is so good because of the adversity we had to overcome, the injuries, we had a quarterback with mono for five weeks.
Belfry (11-3) started the season 2-2, dropping back-to-back games, including a 22-21 loss at home to Pikeville, which won the Class A championship earlier Friday. It reeled off four straight wins before losing a 53-16 decision to Johnson Central to close the regular season.
The Pirates faced little in the way of postseason roadblocks before last weekend, when they traveled to DeSales. They overcame the Louisville private school, 15-14, in double overtime, to reach the finals.
“We lost games early in the year and people wrote us off, ‘Oh Belfry’s not as good as they have been,’ and our kids just kinda took it,” Haywood said. “We took it and said, ‘We’ve got a point to prove. We’ve gotta show ’em we’re just as good as all the other Belfry teams.’ And that’s what our kids wanted to do today.”
Isaac Dixon was named MVP of the game after rushing for 228 yards and three TDs on just 15 carries. He put Belfry on the board first with a 30-yard score with 3:12 to play in the first quarter and answered Bell County’s first score — a 1-yard run by London Stephney — less than a minute later after Stephney scored in the second quarter. Dixon’s third TD extended Belfry’s lead to 30-12 with a 4:31 to play in the game.
He ran 23 yards for a first down to seal the victory after the Pirates secured an onside kick attempt following a second Stephney TD run late in the fourth quarter.
“What I saw on those runs is my linemen doing what they could and the backs doing what they could for me to be able to cross that goal line,” Dixon said.
Stephney finished with 104 rushing yards on 21 carries and was 12 of 18 for 150 yards without an interception.
“I had the best player out here tonight, I think,” Bell County Coach Dudley Hilton said of Stephney, who has offers from Air Force and Army.
Hilton, the state’s second-winningest coach with 393 victories, is in the third season of his third stint at Bell County. He coached the Bobcats, who have increased their win total in every season since he took over, to their only state championship in 2008.
“He’s got a dynasty,” Hilton said of Haywood’s success. “But I’m proud of my kids, buddy. I’m telling ya, we’ve come a long way. We came from dead.”
Belfry entered as an “underdog,” but it left on top, giving Pike County two state titles to celebrate this weekend — and bragging rights for at least one year.
“They were doing all that talking, so it felt really good to rub it in their face with that trophy,” senior cornerback Isaiah Birchfield said. “… We left it on the field tonight and they just couldn’t do nothing with us.”
This story was originally published December 6, 2019 at 10:29 PM.
