SA slingshots to sectional final

What do you carry in your pockets?
Keys?
Your wallet?
A cell phone?
Those might be the top three answers in a game of Family Feud.
The Starfires, however, were carrying much more important cargo last week.
They walked the hallways of South Adams High School with stones in their pockets.
Coach Grant Moser handed each of his players a stone on Monday. He told them they had to keep it with them, but offered no further explanation.
Each day as the Starfires’ sectional semifinal game against Class 2A No. 1 Woodlan approached, he’d check on them. He’d stop them in the cafeteria and ask if they had their stones.
Then, in the locker room Friday prior to kickoff, he shared a famous story — David and Goliath.
“You look at Goliath and he’s way bigger, way stronger, faster,” said Moser, an SAHS graduate. “He’s just a man compared to David, who has a stone and sling. But he has a huge heart and believes he’s gonna win.
“You look at Woodlan on film, they’re much faster than we are, much more athletic. They’re a lot bigger. They’re a lot stronger.
“But what you can’t see on film is the heart that we have, and the guys that we have in our locker room who believed — truly believed — in one another, and truly believed that we could get it done.”
The Starfires set their stones — emblematic of their role as underestimated underdog — aside and took that belief onto the field.
They faced devastation when Trevon McCarter of the Warriors took a pass over the middle 44 yards for a touchdown late in the opening quarter. The game could have easily gone the way of the first meeting when South Adams trailed 22-0 at halftime. A deficit like that will erase the power of pre-game speeches in a hurry. But the home team was resilient.
The Starfires held Woodlan scoreless for the remainder of the opening half. And, with 1:54 left before the intermission, they broke a run of 125 minutes — more than 10 quarters, dating back to Oct. 11, 2014 — without a touchdown against the Warriors when quarterback Marcus Teeter hit receiver Nic Wurster on a 13-yard pass to tie the game.
“When it was 7-7 at halftime, in the locker room we were like, ‘Wow, we can actually pull this out,’” said senior running back/defensive back JD Groh. “That’s when it really started coming to mind that we could do this.”
That mindset only got stronger when they recovered an onside kick to start the second half, struck for a 29-yard gain on the opening play of the ensuing drive and later converted a fourth-and-2 by about an inch. Isaiah Baumgartner, the principle on each of the aforementioned plays, gave South Adams the lead on a 1-yard run 4:08 into the third quarter.