By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.–The South Salem Girls Flag Football team have taken another step towards repeating as State Champions following their 40-7, playoff opening round victory over 3A Pleasant Hill on Thursday night at South Salem High School.
New to this postseason was home site games for the first round before heading to a neutral location for the Elite 8 through the Championship Game, echoing that of the 12-team College Football Playoffs (or CFP), taking a step towards the right direction in recognizing the growth of the sport in its first year as an ‘Emerging Sport’ in the OSAA.
“Great atmosphere here tonight. It felt great to get this first one,” said South Salem Head Coach DJ Correra.
Known for their up-paced offense, going no-huddle often and just flying around on defense has put the Saxons on the map last year, and they’re duplicating that once again this year despite losing a good amount of seniors from last year’s State Championship winning squad.
They’ve traveled a lot this year. To Barlow,, to Liberty, to 3A Yamhill-Carlton up in Yamhill, all to find games to compete in and just overall work on their craft.
“It’s not me. It’s them. They told me the style of football that they wanted to play, what they’re inspiring to. For what it’s worth, these girls know football. They know what they want to do, they know the area’s they want to attack and how to do it. I just got to not mess it up,” Correra said. “We traveled the State this year. That was one of the things we tried to do. We went to Barlow once, we’ve been out to Liberty, and we went to Yamhill-Carlton. So we’re fairly used to getting on a bus, taking those long trips and making the most out of it, getting off, and taking care of business.”
And taking care of business on Thursday is what they did against the Billies. Pleasant Hill is located just east of Eugene, and despite the final result, it has shown a strong showing for being one of the small schools in the bracket this year. South Salem took a 28-0 lead at the halftime break and led 34-0 before the Billies broke the shutout in the third quarter.
But the early spurt by the Saxons was too much for Pleasant Hill to make a comeback as the Saxons took the game 40-7 to advance to the Elite 8 of the postseason. South Salem will head to the Gresham and Barlow-area. Both schools will host games through the Championship Game on Saturday to close out the season.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
