Jenerette does it all as Aynor escapes Waccamaw with narrow win

Aynor fell behind early, but rode a stellar effort from Caleb Jenerete to a 30-29 win over Waccamaw on Friday night.

Jenerette finished with 118 rushing yards on 21 carries with a pair of touchdowns, and four catches for 91 yards and two more scores, plus a one-handed interception on defense.

“I feel like early mornings, late nights in the weight room and the gym, it’ll all pay off at some point. But you keep working … keep believing that God’s got a plan for you, and it all worked out tonight,” Jenerette said.

Jenerette, a 6-foot-2, 200-pound senior, is the nephew of Aynor head coach Jody Jenerette.

Caleb’s father died four years ago, and the player and coach have grown closer since, but the coach says his praise for the player has little to do with family and everything to do with the kind of young man he has become as he dealt with adversity, including an injured shoulder that has plagued him this season.

“He’s probably the hardest-working kid I’ve ever been around. He’s been dealt a bad hand with his shoulder, it hasn’t been right all year. But it was right tonight. It’s probably one of the best performances we’ve ever had since I’ve been at Aynor,” Jody Jenerette said. “You can call me ‘Daddy Ball’ all you want. I could care less. That was a heck of an effort. . . His daddy’s looking down on him tonight, happy as he can be, I can tell you that.”

The win was the first in Region VI-3A play for the Blue Jackets, who stopped a three-game slide and won for the first time since Sept. 16.

“I don’t think we’ve won in like two months, it feels like,” Jody Jenerette said. “It’s been forever because of the hurricane and everything. We’ve had so many bad things happen, and it would have been so easy for this group to put their head down, but we just kept plugging along.”

Waccamaw got started first, striking on a 5-yard touchdown pass from Brandon Stecz to Dominic Gullo.

Stecz hit Tylik Edwards from 20 yards out with 10:41 left in the second quarter for a 14-0 lead.

Aynor followed suit, taking to the air and reaching the end zone on 30-yard scoring pass to a wide open Jenerette, but Waccamaw added to its lead quickly when Gullo snared the onsides kickoff try, broke a tackle and went 45 yards for the score to stretch the lead to 21-7.

Jenerette stretched over three defensive backs with 1:06 to grab a touchdown pass from 36 yards out to cut the lead to seven at halftime.

Jenerette scored on a 38-yard run in the third quarter and a two-point conversion gave the Blue Jackets a lead for the first time at 22-21, but Waccamaw answered on its next possession with a six-play drive keyed by a 25-yard run from Jordan Marshall on a third-and-14 play, setting up Stecz for a 1-yard keeper to retake the lead at 29-22.

Things went south for Waccamaw from there. A short punt gave Aynor great field position at the Warrior 39, and a personal foul after an 8-yard gain by Noah Seaver moved the ball to the Waccamaw 16. A couple of short gains later on a fourth-and-2 play, Jenerette leaned forward for the first down, then found space and broke free for an 8-yard scoring run to put Aynor ahead for good.

“These kids deserve it. We feel like we got our hearts ripped out last week against Loris,” Jody Jenerette said. “For them to just get back into practice, have great attitudes and come over and play well, it’s a hundred percent about our kids right now. You couldn’t ask for a better group of young men.”

This story was originally published November 4, 2016 at 10:57 PM with the headline "Jenerette does it all as Aynor escapes Waccamaw with narrow win."