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Wynn makes the difference in Hudson's playoff-clinching win

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By BART O’CONNELL

Tribune correspondent

Published: November 7, 2009

WESLEY CHAPEL - Zack Wynn shook off the notion that this was his best game, his best moment on a football field.

Too many mistakes, he said. Too much scrambling and bad timing with the receivers, he explained. And after taking a 17-0 first-quarter lead, perhaps the players around him, maybe even himself, thought they were playoff-bound a little too soon as Wiregrass Ranch scored three unanswered touchdowns to lead 18-17 in the fourth quarter.

"It was incredible, like going from the highest point in the world to not being able to do anything," he said.

But when he and his teammates had to perform, even without their best receiver, even when the offensive line was having an off night, Wynn showed the one quality that sets him apart in Hudson's (5-4) 20-18 victory to take runner-up in Class 4A-District 6. It's the one intangible even an honor student like himself can't measure.

He's a difference maker who makes everyone around him better.

Wynn scored all 20 Cobras points on two rushing touchdowns, two extra points, and two field goals including a 23-yarder with 1:18 to play.

He did it with help from guys like junior Dontaie Collins, a defensive back who Coach Mark Nash said "couldn't catch a cold if he stood in the rain" a year ago. With Pasco County's leading receiver James Tello out of the game with a partially dislocated right shoulder, Wynn fired a perfect third-down pass to Collins, who made a leaping grab in tight coverage down the middle and turned it into a 56-yard gain which set up the winning field goal.

Then there's Jake Aguis, technically a receiver though he has a more important job on the team. He holds kicks, which he did brilliantly on the most pressure-packed hold of his life, a high snap which he just had to put down for Wynn if the Cobras were going to punch a ticket to Gainesville in two weeks.

And receivers Mike Powers and Alex Graham, who only had two catches between them, saved their biggest play for defense, jarring the ball loose from a Bulls receiver on a fourth-down pass that would have given them a chance to continue a potential game-winning drive of their own with 40 seconds left.

If any of them failed to do their job, Hudson isn't going to the playoffs. That's the message that Defensive Coordinator Keith Newton gave to the team afterwards. With Wiregrass Ranch's postgame speech going on no more than 30 feet away, Newton pointed toward it and said, "That could be you right now."

The Bulls (5-4) comeback attempt, which included 141 rushing yards from running back Josh Johnson, was so impressive, so determined, even Coach Mark Nash was convinced.

"There was a moment when I just thought, 'It's not our time,'" Nash told the team. "But you guys didn't allow that to happen."

They all came through to earn Hudson's third playoff berth in the last five years under Nash, and Wynn earned his second – the first quarterback to start for two Hudson playoff teams. Before Nash's arrival, the Cobras went 25 years without one.

"I don't see how anyone, anymore, can question the heart of Hudson High School," he said.

Correspondent Bart O'Connell can be reached at tampasport@gmail.com.

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