Pioneers Down ‘Cats, 36-20

East Ridge beat Hixson, 36-20, Friday night on the road lifting the Pioneers into the Region 2/4A high school football playoffs.

The Pioneers (6-4) will travel to undefeated Elizabethton next week for the first round of the state football playoffs.

Jamii Bowman finished the night with 132 yards on 10 carries, including touchdown runs of 11 and 78 yards. Cameron Sanders carried the ball nine times for 110 yards, including a 20-yard TD.

All told the Pioneers’ ground game accounted for 356 of its 385 yards in the game.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.