By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
Andrew Carrouth’s second go-around as a high school football head coach has become rewarding.
Now he has a conference championship associated with his name.
Carrouth, a former Southern Alamance player and head coach, has directed North Moore to a Mid-Carolina Conference title with Friday night’s 35-0 victory at Graham.
“I knew I wanted to still be a head football coach and found an awesome opportunity down at North Moore,” Carrouth said in an interview with The Alamance News after the game.
The Mustangs (9-0, 5-0 Mid-Carolina Conference) are a Class 1-A team competing in a conference with 1-A and 2-A teams. This week’s game against sixth-place Chatham Central is the only obstacle in the way of an undefeated regular season.
Carrouth, 37, is in his fourth season at North Moore, where his teams have produced a 26-13 record. That includes last year’s 10-2 mark, quite a feat considering the team won a total of five games in two years prior to Carrouth’s arrival.
The Mustangs avenged a 2021 loss to Cummings a week ago. So there were all sorts of Alamance County connections for Carrouth the past couple of weeks.
Not to mention his North Moore team uses almost an exclusive rushing attack in a grind-it-out style. That reminds him of his alma mater.
“We’ve got a lot of blue-collar kids,” he said. “It has been good for us.”
Carrouth’s Southern Alamance teams went 21-35 across five seasons, ending in 2017.
[Story continues below photo of North Moore vs. Graham game at Graham.]
There are vast differences from his time at Southern Alamance, a Class 4-A school. For Friday night’s game, Carrouth drove the bus to Graham and he planned to handle laundry duties when the team returned to Robbins.
“And I love it,” he said.
By midway through the third quarter, North Moore held a 28-0 lead on Graham, with Carson Brady and Nathan Rogers each scoring on two touchdown runs.
It was a sour result on homecoming and Senior Night for Graham (4-5, 3-2), which had a three-game winning streak snapped.
“Not the outcome I wanted,” senior quarterback Carlos Quintanilla said.
The Red Devils didn’t pick up a first down until the opening seconds of the fourth quarter. On the next play, Quintanilla’s tipped pass was intercepted in the end zone.
Graham reached the North Moore 5-yard line after a fourth-down conversion on its next possession. A sack ruined that scoring chance and the Red Devils had the ball for just one more series.
Graham had only 21 players in uniform.
“The team has always been bench short since I got here,” Quintanilla said. “We’ve got to work with what we have.”
Cummings 61, Seaforth 0: At Pittsboro, the visiting Cavaliers collected their second shutout in a three-game span in the Mid-Carolina Conference.
Johnniyus Sharpe ran for three touchdowns and threw for another. Jonathan Paylor, who had a rushing touchdown, and Khavarie Hightower, who caught a touchdown pass, both returned punts for touchdowns. Marione Enoch ran for a touchdown and Ja’kori McNair had a touchdown pass to AJ Gillespie.
Paylor had 71 rushing yards and 43 receiving yards.
Cummings (5-3, 3-1) can secure the league’s top seed for Class 2-A teams by defeating visiting Graham to end the regular season. Seaforth fell to 2-7, 2-3.
Southern Alamance 44, Durham Jordan 36: At Durham, the Patriots set up a winner-take-all matchup in the DAC-VII Conference’s regular-season finale against visiting Durham Hillside next Friday.
Southern (7-2, 4-0) did so by winning another high-scoring game, this time with Jackson Parrish and Logan Foust both running for two touchdowns.
The Patriots didn’t attempt a pass with four players rushing for more than 90 yards.
Parrish gained 134 yards on 15 carries, including touchdown runs of 52 and 25 yards. His first score came after the Patriots regained possession on a Foust interception.
Foust had 107 yards on 16 carries, with touchdown runs of 5 and 14 yards. Josiah Tysinger posted a 6-yard touchdown run as part of his 97 yards on nine carries.
Stanley Eno’s six carries accounted for 95 yards, including a 28-yard run to open the scoring.
Amareon Blue had four touchdown runs and 165 rushing yards on 25 carries for Jordan (3-6, 2-2).
Eastern Alamance 42, Northwood 14: At Pittsboro, Jason Ball threw two of his four touchdown passes to Antoine Pugh as the visiting Eagles wrapped up the top seed from the Central Carolina 3-A Conference for the state playoffs.
Ball also ran for a touchdown for Eastern (8-1, 5-0). His other scoring passes went to Trynton Wiley and Charlie Deacon. Josh Murray added a rushing touchdown.
Northwood (4-5, 2-2) scored the game’s final two touchdowns.
Williams 56, Cedar Ridge 0: At Hillsborough, the Bulldogs (6-3, 4-1) posted their second shutout in Central Carolina 3-A Conference play with the road romp. Williams scored half its points in the first quarter.
Haneef Rasheed had two of the Bulldogs’ five rushing touchdowns, joined by Kylei Richmond, Dan Mahan and Amarion Richmond with one each.
Jaelan Brown threw for two touchdowns and Mahan had one touchdown throw. Cam’ron Jones, Bron Rogers and Chase Adkins had the touchdown catches.
Western Alamance 35, Roxboro Person 7: At Roxboro, Kevion Hudson scored on two touchdown runs as the visiting Warriors won for the second week in a row.
Hudson, who gained 146 yards on 20 carries, scored on runs of 21 and 7 yards. Mason Hogsed had an 8-yard touchdown run.
James Newton scored on a 29-yard touchdown throw from Evan Kuehnel.
Western (5-4, 3-2) led 17-7 at halftime, aided by Jacob Carter’s field goal. Person (5-4, 3-2) was limited to 105 yards of total offense.
