The Panther Creek football team arrived in Fuquay-Varina on Friday night as the next big thing in the Tri-9 conference. Led by receiver Graham Love, quarterback Kameron Bryant and running back Kel Jackson, the Catamounts are big, deep and athletic. In the school’s third year of varsity football, Panther Creek is all grown up and ready to take a shot at the conference top spot. Of course, with four straight conference championships in the Bengals’ trophy case, the road to Tri-9 supremacy runs through Fuquay-Varina.

And it looked like the Catamounts were in the right place at the right time to stake their claim, with four Fuquay defensive regulars sidelined to injury including three starting linebackers: Isaac Minor, Eric Powell and Dylan Montgomery. Lineman, Eric Cartledge was also out and defensive and offensive lineman, Shaun Underwood was questionable with a broken finger. Underwood did play with a padded cast as did defensive lineman, Soren Ferrell, who has been playing through a hand injury. To make matters worse, Ethan Ricci, who had 10 tackles at Cary on September 11, went down with a knee injury four minutes into the game and defensive lineman, Joe Hoover left the game with an injury.

“We just tried to treat it like a normal game,” junior fullback, Cory Hunter said. “Our coach always talks about how we’re going to face adversity at some point, and it’s how we handle it and how we overcome it that’s important.”

The 2008 Tri-8 Player of the Year and all his teammates faced down that adversity and overcame it and an electric Panther Creek offense for a 52-41 win.

Hunter had a very special night, rushing for 463 yards on 27 carriers – just 22 yards shy of the NCHSAA state record – and four touchdowns. The performance put Hunter’s name in the record book as the second all-time N.C. single game rusher behind Greg Williams of Raleigh Enloe High, who set the record in 2005 with 485 yards. Senior quarterback, Nate Budde ran for 112 yards and scored four touchdowns, including an interception he grabbed while playing cornerback and returned 40 yards for a score.

“It was a gladiator performance,” Fuquay coach, Ryan Habich said of Hunter and Budde. “You look at the rushing yards, but I don’t think a lot of people realize that Nate and Cory had to go out there on defense, too. They played defense and they played offense. They went out there because they knew they had to make big plays on defense.”

Hunter racked up yardage in huge chunks and small bites all night long, whatever the Bengals needed. Among his 27 carries, he had runs of 62, 48, 46, 38, 33 and 30 yards. And he said he wasn’t doing it on his own.

“The line played great tonight,” he said of his blockers. “They were up and pretty much everything. All I had to do was run through holes.”

Underwood and Max Fortner each had sacks and along with Ferrell pressured Bryant all evening. Once the Bengals defense started shadowing Love man-to-man in the third quarter, the Catamounts offense slowed. After scoring 21 first half points and taking a 21-18 lead into intermission, Panther Creek was scoreless in the third quarter while Fuquay opened up a 32-21 lead, and never trailed again.

Fuquay rushed for 614 yards in the game while Panther Creek had 390 yards in the air, as Bryant completed 24 of 48 passes and threw three touchdown passes. The Catamounts had 121 yards on the ground. Jackson had 108 yards on 20 carries and three rushing touchdowns. He also caught two touchdown passes. Love caught 11 passes for 207 yards and one touchdown.

Fuquay-Varina has a merciful bye this Friday, which should hopefully give several injuries time to heal prior to an October 2 trip to Apex High.

“I think this game helps up out as a whole team,” Budde said. “We know we can lose five people and still win. This really helps us for when we get those people back.”