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The teams put 108 points on the scoreboard. The two starting quarterbacks passed for a combined 735 yards, not including a trick play in which Calvary Day’s versatile Jalen Hicks caught a lateral and threw a 20-yard touchdown pass to MJ Knight, so make it 755 yards through the air.

Yet the host Cavaliers’ video game-like 59-49 victory over Oceanside Collegiate Academy on Friday night really came down to a defensive stop. 

Calvary’s LaVon Owens hauls in a one-handed grab vs. Oceanside. (Courtesy ProShot_Media_)

The Landsharks faced fourth-and-2 at the CDS 10 and trailed by a 10-point deficit with 1:28 remaining in regulation. They had shown an ability to score from anywhere on the field, and quickly. One more TD and a successful onside kick would make for an edge-of-your-seat finish.

But Michael Strickler, a defensive player who had scored OCA’s final touchdown by rushing the ball out of a Wildcat formation earlier in the fourth quarter, was stuffed on a dive into the line for a turnover on downs, one yard shy of a first down.

“I kind of figured that was going to happen,” Calvary Day coach Jason Cameron said of the defense needing to make a play on a night showcasing the offenses. “Our defense fought all night. They played their best game. The scoreboard does not show how well they played. It showed how good Oceanside is. 

“They broke tackles,” he continued. “They were tough to bring down to the ground. We were in position. We’ve just got to tackle better. We’re going to get there. I have a bunch of kids that refuse to stop fighting. That’s all I ask for.”

Normally, asking for CDS junior quarterback James Mobley IV to throw 30 times wouldn’t be necessary in the team’s balanced offense. He completed 17 passes for 281 yards and two touchdowns with one interception.

Normally, it wouldn’t be critical to send senior kicker Grady Shiver on the field to make all eight of his extra-point attempts in the game and a 35-yard field goal as time expired in the first half.

And normally, if power back Ca’Den Jones rushed for three touchdowns as part of his 22 carries for 86 yards, that figured to mean Calvary had a routine victory.

But this game wasn’t typical for the Cavaliers, a regular contender in the GHSA playoffs, nor for the Landsharks of Mount Pleasant, who won consecutive state titles in South Carolina the last two seasons and edged visiting CDS in a relative defensive struggle 16-15 in 2024.

Each team knew what the other wanted to do, and it didn’t seem to matter that much because no lead was safe, and punters were used sparingly. 

“It was a great win by the team,” Mobley, also the team’s punter, said of what he called a “back-and-forth” contest. “The O-line held up pretty well. The defense got a stop when we needed to.

“(Oceanside) made a great fight; Oceanside played a really good game,” he added. “It was two evenly matched teams.”

Landsharks junior quarterback Aiden Manavian passed for 216 yards by halftime and had 171 yards just in the third quarter. He finished with 454 yards and five touchdowns on 20 completions in 35 attempts. 

He was also intercepted three times by Calvary’s Scottie Walker, Emerson Lewis, and Shawn Williams.

Manavian was 4 of 6 for 67 yards in the fourth quarter, with no TD passes or interceptions.

His favorite target, and a big one, was senior receiver Terrence Johnson, who caught four touchdown passes of 18, 56, 19, and 51 yards. It often took multiple Cavaliers defenders to bring him down – if he didn’t shed them for more yards and scores after catches.

In a similar scenario, Tyler Garner caught a short pass from Manavian on the first play from scrimmage of the third quarter. Garner broke a tackle and avoided getting pushed out of bounds as he sprinted along the left sideline for a 91-yard touchdown.

With the Calvary defense trying to contain the OCA passing game, Zakhi Muncey rushed 12 times for 147 yards and a touchdown. But he also fumbled away the ball as part of a sequence of plays in the fourth quarter that helped secure the Calvary victory.

Oceanside had driven from its 17 to the CDS 1, the big play Muncey’s 74-yard run in which he broke through a big hole, got into the secondary and made a cut past a defender while shifting into a seemingly even faster gear.

Strickler entered the game and covered the remaining yard for a TD and a 49-45 lead with 7:29 remaining in regulation.

Calvary’s Ty Pinckney returned the ensuing kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown that returned momentum to the Cavaliers as well as a 52-49 edge with 7:12 left.

“Being down like that and having Ty return the kickoff, man, that gets everybody fired up,” Shiver said.

Shiver, it should be noted here, also gave his team a lift in a preventive way by booting several kickoffs into the end zone for touchbacks. The opponent can’t score on kickoffs, it can’t return.

Oceanside (0-2) still had plenty of time to bounce back, but after a touchback gave them the ball at the 20, Muncey fumbled on first down, and Jeffrey McCormick recovered for Calvary.

With a short field, the Cavaliers drove for a score with the help of a 24-yard catch and run by Pinckney and Jones’ 1-yard plunge for 59-49 with 5:09 remaining.

Cameron’s team improved to 2-0 in his first season as the Cavaliers’ head coach after serving as offensive coordinator for two years under state legend Mark Stroud, who stepped down after the 2024 campaign. Now the athletic director, Stroud, still impacts the football program through Camerson, who also has been a head coach at Jenkins and Vidalia.

“I’ve learned so much from Coach (Mark) Stroud and his coaching style,” Cameron said. “He always used to talk about you never get too high, you never get too low. When we jumped out to 14-0 (in the first quarter), we knew it was going to be a dogfight. We knew it so we were prepared for it.”

Photo: Courtesy proshot_media_

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