North Cobb Christian rewarded for game-winning play

The North Cobb Christian football team’s game-winning play Sept. 2 earned a 19-15 win over Wesleyan.

From there, it went viral, and it continues to earn publicity four months later, selected as the 2022 Play of the Year by SBLive Sports.

An SBLive Sports representative visited the North Cobb Christian campus this week, presenting a $1,000 award to Eagles coach Matt Jones and the players involved in the play — Skyler Parker, Brayden Williby, Jadin Coates, Jacob Cruz, Matty Go and Trey Priester.

Down 15-13 with the clock nearing zero, Go, the Eagles’ quarterback, took the snap and threw a 10-yard forward pass to Parker, who passed back to Priester.

Preister lateraled to Cruz, who threw it back to Parker. The ball made its way to Coates and he saw a lane, got a key block from Williby and broke free for a 55-yard touchdown run up the far sideline to win the game.

“We put the play in on Wednesday for the game on Friday against Wesleyan, which was the team that beat us two years ago,” Jones said. “We didn’t think we would actually use it. We were down, and we got the ball back with around 9 seconds left, and we ran this play we called ‘Wolf.’ There’s not a whole lot of plays you got to score a touchdown from 67 yards away.”

It was a play Jones never saw himself calling that Friday night. North Cobb Christian ran the play four times in practice that week, with only one successful attempt.

“The kids just executed it perfectly,” Jones said. “They did all the lateraling. We worked the first part of the play where we (lateraled) like one time, and they just kept it going. All those kids were seniors, and they are super close after playing with each other for a long time. They just naturally do that stuff at practice while messing around. It came natural to them.”

The award-winning play moved North Cobb Christian to 3-0 that week and avenged a second-round loss in the 2020 state playoffs, where Wesleyan escaped with a 20-17 win.

Looking back on it, Jones said the ball was in the right players’ hands at the right time. He said Coates is one of the fastest players on the team, and it worked out perfectly that his speed carried through to the end zone.

“What’s crazy is it was the last play of the game, and it was at our home field,” Jones said. “Our entire student section was there. It was really a unifying thing for our school and our community to be able to beat that team which had beaten us in the playoffs two years ago on a play like that. It was pretty special.”