CHATTANOOGA — If Cayden Aukerman didn’t specifically dream it, he certainly had visions almost exactly like it.
Tie game. One minute to play. State championship on the line. Aukerman sprinting open and the football flying towards him in a perfect spiral. Here was the Page senior’s chance to become legend.
“I don’t like to put that much pressure on myself,” Aukerman said. “I was more grateful for the opportunity. I feel like every receiver’s dream is to be on the biggest stage and have a play drawn up for you.”
Aukerman closed his hands around the ball, sprinted into the end zone and screamed to the heavens.
He wasn’t dreaming anymore.
Page defeated Sevier County 21-14 in the Class 5A BlueCross Bowl at Finley Stadium on Dec. 4, winning its first TSSAA football state championship after four consecutive runner-up finishes. Cam Kruse’s 45-yard touchdown pass to Aukerman was the game-winning score; the play that exorcised a quartet of demons.
“This is my only Christmas wish,” Aukerman said.
At first, that wish seemed unlikely to be fulfilled.
The Patriots (14-0) allowed the Smoky Bears (13-2), who defeated them 27-20 last season, to open the game with a 17-play, 81-yard touchdown drive in which they converted five third downs and took seven minutes off the clock. Sevier County ran 23 more plays than Page in the first half and began its first series of the second half 26 yards from the end zone.
Charles Rathbone calls himself a “pessimistic person at heart,” and if there was ever a time to be pessimistic, it was now. Yet the Page coach, even after four years of gut-wrenchers, refused.
“Except for that second one against West when they got up big on us, I’ve never thought we were gonna lose,” Rathbone said. “I stayed positive with these kids. … I’d be a hypocrite if I teach these kids never give up and always play hard if I was the one that gave up.”
Rathbone was rewarded. Knight Wilson made a tackle to force a turnover on downs. On the ensuing drive, the Air Force commit stretched his arm as far as it would go to convert a 4th-and-2. James Pierre tied the game a play later.
Wilson gave Page its first lead on a touchdown catch from Kruse with six minutes left, but Sevier County’s Bryson Headrick responded with a rushing score. The Patriots got the ball back and used three runs to enter Smoky Bear territory.
“The play was ‘Fade Out’, and then we checked an X post,” Aukerman said. “We probably ran Fade Out or Denver, which is a hitch by the outside, about eight or nine times (this season). We were trying to take the easy profits, that’s what the mindset was coming into the game, then we saw how much they were triggering. So we went into halftime and said, ‘Hey, it’s gonna be open. We’re gonna call it, so be ready.’ “
Wilson made a key assist by running an out route — which, according to Kruse, “we drew in the dirt” — to get Sevier County’s cornerback out of position. Aukerman’s double move did the rest.
“Hell of a play call,” Kruse said. “The line is the folks that get it done. If we don’t have time to drop back and throw that deep shot, man, this game might have ended a little bit differently.”
Instead, it ended with Cooper Newman’s Hail Mary attempt hitting the turf and Rathbone thinking about nothing other than finding his son, senior offensive lineman Jacob Rathbone, and throwing his arms around him.
“I just wanted to hug everyone, find them, and then I wanted to sit back and watch them celebrate,” he said. “After five years now, I finally got to do it.”
Jacob Shames can be reached by email at jshames@gannett.com and on X/Twitter @Jacob_Shames.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: How Page won its first TSSAA football state championship
