PAC-6 Fields Five Squads in Beast of the Hill Tourney: Focus on Falcons

Courtesy Don Callahan

If you are interested in PAC-6 football, then this past Friday, the 4th Annual Beast of the Hill 7-on-7 tourney at the University of North Carolina was the place to be in attendance.  Five of the seven current members of the PAC-6 conference were participating, including Hillside, Person, Northern Durham, Jordan and East Chapel Hill. In an earlier post we discussed Hillside and their eventual run to the championship [Hillside and Wakefield Highlight UNC Beast of the Hill Tourney].  I was fortunate enough to get out in the 100 degree heat and take in most of the day and got to see a lot of squads in action including all five of the PAC-6 teams.  As I mentioned in the earlier post I was most impressed with the Hornets, but if you are fan of the PAC-6 or football in the area, then the prospect of some exciting football should make all fans excited to get the 2011 season underway.

The tournament was organized with four pods of six teams each and allowed for five games during the round-robin to establish a first and second place finisher.  The top teams from each pod were then moved to the elimination round in a four team championship.  The four second place finishers were placed in a lower level championship round to establish a second tier (lower flight) champion.  Both Hillside and East Chapel Hill moved through their pods undefeated, while Jordan tallied a 3-2 mark and both Northern Durham and Person finished at 1-4.  East Chapel Hill fell in the semifinals to Wakefield, while Jordan lost out on the chance to make either elimination bracket with a final round robin overtime loss to Hermitage High School out of Richmond, VA.  Both Northern and Person ended up near the bottom of their respective pods, but there were positives from both squads.

Jordan brought two squads to the event, an 'A' team and 'B' team comprised primarily of underclassmen and jayvee players.  The 'A' team was in a pod with eventual pod champ Hermitage (Richmond, VA), Leesville Road,  Great Bridge (Chesapeake, VA) and Northern Nash.  West Mecklenburg was also in the pod, but pulled out and provided each of the remaining five teams with a forfeit win.  The Falcons ended up 2-2 against the teams in attendance and 3-2 with the forfeit win against West Meck.  They opened up the tourney with an early morning loss to eventual lower level champ Leesville Road, 18-0 and followed it up with a 20-14 win over Great Bridge.  Prior to lunch they picked up another win against Northern Nash, 18-6, before falling in overtime to Hermitage in the final round robin game of the day.  The Falcons had a tough draw, with Leesville ending up with just one loss on the day to Hermitage in round-robin play and Hermitage going undefeated in round-robin play to eventually bow out in the semis of the championship tourney to an undefeated Hillside squad.