A kiss and a prayer

There’s less than 30 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter and time is running out.

Goldsboro High School has the ball and has made a valiant comeback against Eastern Wayne.

But with its backup quarterback showing little sense of urgency in the fleeting moments of the game, it looks as though the Cougars will suffer a three-point loss to their rival for a second year in a row.

“What are you doing?” a man yells from the GHS cheering section. “Hike the ball.”

He has no way of knowing that sophomore Tay Hooker is in complete control — that when he looks down at his wrist coach, a Velcro strap hugging his forearm that lists the team’s offensive playbook, the young man isn’t scrambling to get on the same page with his sideline or receivers.

Instead, Hooker is looking into Lynnie Wright’s eyes, calling on his late grandmother to guide him during what would be the biggest moment of his young football career.

“I looked down at (a picture of) her and kissed my wrist,” he said. “Then, I made it happen.”

Hooker threw a prayer toward the corner of the endzone and watched as senior wide receiver Dorian Rodgers, who has been praised since the offseason for the hard work he has put in on the practice field, pulled it down.

“We were going to an opposite play, like a slant or something, but I gave Tay the signal,” Rodgers said. “Then, all of a sudden, the ball was in the air.”

The outcome of that play — a touchdown that put GHS up 20-17 with 11 seconds left on the clock — will live in local lore for years to come.

A year after suffering a heartbreaking loss at the hands of this same rival, the Cougars stormed the field after a stunning victory — a celebration that second-year head coach Timothy Ray said marked the culmination of the biggest win of his young career.

“Tonight, we had a great game plan, things went wrong, we didn’t execute, so we had to adjust some things. The guys adjusted on the fly,” Ray said, his shirt still soaked from a post-game Gatorade shower. “They made plays and that’s on them. The boys just went out there and made plays. They all wanted it. They all wanted to make this happen.”

But the truth is, nobody was expecting much from the latest edition of the Wayne County Classic.

Sure, the rivalry between the two schools is among the fiercest in Eastern North Carolina, but when both teams lost their starting quarterbacks to injury during preseason play, fans anticipated a low-scoring, anticlimactic affair.

And few expected the hero to be a sophomore quarterback who, before coming off the bench after starter Jamin Jacobs went down with a broken collarbone, had never taken a snap on the varsity level.

Hooker believed.

And so did the woman whose picture, whose spirit, calmed him when the majority of those in attendance Friday night — including some of his teammates — were unsure how he would lead his team in a hostile environment with so much on the line.

“Nobody thought I could do it. Nobody. They thought when Jamin went down, everything was over,” Hooker said. “So, I stepped up and did what I had to do.”

For more photos from the game, click here.