The seventh grade Bearcat football team may have run out of gas on defense in their 20-6 loss against Washington Middle School Wednesday, but head coach Blake Carruthers and his team won a coin flip to make the middle school championship this season.

“Right now we have a coin toss between Central and Bainbridge,” Defensive Coach Patrick Clark said after the game. “If we win that coin toss, we’ll be able to travel to Cairo and we’ll play again for the middle school championship.”

In this week’s game, Washington scored early in the first half and guarded their end zone well. The Bearcats had the opportunity to tie the game right before halftime, but ran out of time with the score at 6-0.

During halftime, Carruthers kept his team motivated and prepared them to strike in the second half, telling the players that the score is 0-0 again.

“I just told them to keep their heads up,” Carruthers said.

The Bearcats clawed their way to a touchdown in their first drive in the second half, but couldn’t keep up with Washington as they scored another touchdown. Bainbridge had a chance to score once more, but a questionable fourth down call gave Washington the ball again, leading them to another touchdown. The game ended 20-6.

“It was a hard fought game,” Carruthers said. “Right there at the end it was kind of tense because we thought we had the first down. It was hard to take that away from the kids.”

Clark was proud of the way the team fought on defense, but made clear that the players didn’t come through to stop some of the bigger plays.

“To be honest, we missed some crucial tackles,” Clark said. “We came out second half, got the ball and drove it down the field and scored. But we came right back and gave up another big play. It’s all about making plays. We just didn’t make enough plays.”

With sights set on a potential to play for the middle school championship, Carruthers looks back on the season and can see the team’s improvements through the past six weeks.

“The kids improved so much,” Carruthers said. “We gave up 19 points the first game, and we’ve only given up one touchdown since then until today.”

Bainbridge will get a chance for redemption against Washington next week.