BIGELOW - As a big, bright moon rose over the Arkansas River Valley last Friday night, homecoming at Bigelow took on more of a festival atmosphere of sorts, with a large, overflow home crowd looping the field early on, along with the community fire truck, plenty of fireworks, a National Guard cannon blasting away, and an irritating horn.
However, in the midst of all the hoopla, there was a football game, the first-ever between the two schools, and Rison head coach Caleb Carmikle said afterwards, "it was their (Bigelow) Super Bowl, and a perfect storm." And during a 47-second stretch late in the third quarter, the host Panthers used a pair of touchdowns to pull away from a 27-14 lead to bomb the Wildcats, 54-14, and send their fans home happy, as they improved to 6-0 before the end of September. On the other end of the stick, though, Rison headed back south, not near as happy, towing an 0-5 record.
After continuing through another portion of a tough stretch of opponents (has there been another schedule as tough at Rison) to start the season, Carmikle stated, "It is hard, but we've still got a lot to play for, because we're just now getting ready to start conference (this Friday at Camden Harmony Grove)." Like undefeated Hoxie just a week before, an opponent expected to make a deep Class 3A playoff run, Bigelow (moving up to 3A next year), with a roster of 40 players, feels it has the pieces in 2023 to make their own deep run in the Class 2A state playoffs. So, back-to-back weeks, Rison faced potentially a pair of possible state championship teams.
Agreeing that there were so many little things that his squad did not capitalize on during the game, Carmikle said, "It seemed like we got them into third down all night, but we just couldn't get (the defense) off the field." That was evidenced by the 76 offensive snaps the Panthers got off. And Carmikle was correct in his assessment of conversions, as Bigelow converted on 6 out of eight thi...
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