As the final seconds ticked off the clock of the T.R. Miller Tigers quarterfinal playoff game Friday night at Homer Smiles Stadium on the campus of Leeds Middle School, and the buzzer sounded a 24-20, the 2013 season ended for the Tigers.
As the season ended, the Tigers finished with an overall record of 12-1.
T.R. Miller Tiger head coach Jamie Riggs said that in Friday’s loss to the Green Wave, his team did the things—four fumbles, one interception, and a failure to score from the 1-yard line that will get any team beat.
“First of all, I appreciate everyone that came to the game,” Riggs said. “I thought we had a tremendous crowd there at the game and I was very proud of that. We had great support. The bottom line is there are certain things that will cause you to lose a game and we made more of them than Leeds did. That is the bottom line when it comes down to it. We both wanted to win the game bad and we played as hard as you could possibly play. But those things caused us to get beat.”
As for the overall season, Riggs said his Tigers “played really hard” the entire year.
“This group practiced hard and played hard and got themselves ready to play each week,” he said. “From that standpoint, I could not ask anything more out of them. We won a tough region, but the hard part of high school football is when you lose in the playoffs, it is just suddenly over. I don’t think anyone is happy with the final result here. It is what it is.”
Riggs said the 2013 team had 13 seniors on it, a group that will be missed.
“I was just really pleased with the seniors we had this year,” he said. “We only had 13 of them, but they really did a nice job at practice. They never really caused us the first problem the entire year and really got along well with the rest of the team. I have had some years where the seniors stood apart from the rest of the team. That didn’t happen this year and with this group. I am just really proud of what they accomplished this year.”
So how does the 2014 team look?
“Right off hand we have a few linemen that are coming back that played for us this year,” Riggs said of next year’s team. “That will be good. Obviously we have some seniors who did a terrific job for us here. Especially since Kameron (Coleman) and Dominique (Jackson) have been in the backfield for us for what seems like forever. We will have to replace them and all, but that is part of it. That is why we play all those B-team games and get those other guys ready. We coach next year’s team this year.”
Jackson finished with 1,528 total rushing yards on 146 attempts to lead T.R. Miller in the rushing category. He finished with 25 touchdowns during the 2013 season.
T.R. Miller scored a total of 529 points during the 2013 season and allowed 183.
While Friday’s loss ended the year for the 2013 season, Riggs said the 2014 Tigers will start working for next year in a few weeks.
“We will take just a little time off and get going with the off-season weight program,” Riggs said. “We will do spring practice in February like we usually do then try to get a little faster in the spring and move on.
I think we will be competitive again this year.”