Knoxville Catholic football has to work a little to beat Oak Ridge in 5A quarterfinals

OAK RIDGE — Catholic picked up another playoff victory, but the Irish finally had to break a postseason sweat for the first time Friday night against Oak Ridge on Blankenship Field.

The Irish, who cruised through their first two playoff opponents, weathered a furious second-half rally by the Wildcats as they posted a 37-28 win in the quarterfinals of the state Class 5A playoffs.

Catholic (10-3), which travels to Central for next week’s semifinals, was seemingly in control after taking a 28-6 lead with 2:37 to play in the third quarter.

Oak Ridge (10-3) scored the next 14 points before the Irish regained control late.

It was hardly a runaway win for the Irish, like many were predicting.

The Wildcats held Catholic’s high-powered offense to 335 total yards.

“Oak Ridge is very good defensively,” said Irish coach Steve Matthews.

“They have some excellent athletes on defense. They did a good job containing us and we didn’t do a good job executing. They did some things defensively that hurt us, but fortunately we made some big plays in the second half. We’ve got to get better.”

Oak Ridge cut the margin to eight points with 8:48 to play on a 38-yard touchdown scamper by quarterback Johnny Stewart.

But the Irish went up, 30-20, after Oak Ridge was called for holding in the end zone with 2:54 remaining.

Catholic quarterback Jack Sompayrac then hit Dashon Bussell with a 27-yard scoring pass to go up 37-20.

Oak Ridge scored with 1:23 to play when Kai’Reese Pendergrass hauled in his third touchdown pass of the night from Stewart.

Wildcats coach Joe Gaddis said he couldn’t have asked for a better effort from his defense.

“Nobody thought we could beat this team, or even play with them,” said Gaddis.

“In retrospect, we can, but we just didn’t get it done. Their offense is just great and they’ve got a great offensive line, but if we had played in all phases of the game like we did on defense we would have won that game.”

Sompayrac completed 14-of-21 passes for 178 yards to lead the Irish on offense. He also had 63 yards rushing on 11 attempts.

In addition to the late scoring toss to Bussell, Sompayrac connected with Cam Blakely on a 35-yard touchdown pass in the third quarter on fourth-and-11. He also opened the scoring with a 7-yard run on fourth down in the first quarter.

Stewart was 11-for-25 through the air for 161 yards. He hooked up with Pendergrass on touchdown passes of 13, 26 and 29 yards. Stewart also ran 18 times for 75 yards.