LITTLE ROCK — Matthew Ollison rose slowly from the turf Friday night at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.
Camden Fairview’s junior quarterback had just led the Cardinals to a 28-10 victory over Batesville in the Class 5A state championship game, capping a 14-0 season that culminated with the school’s first state championship.
Ollison had guided the offense to four second-half touchdown drives - completing 10 of 12 passes for 222 yards and 2 touchdowns - after it had gained just 37 yards in the first half. He threw for 188 of those yards in the second half, mostly while planting on a tender ankle after getting it rolled up in a pile during the third quarter.
So when the stadium’s public address announcer proclaimed him the game’s Most Valuable Player - he also punted six times for 234 yards, three which were downed inside Batesville’s 20 - Ollison rose gingerly and limped to the center of the field to accept his plaque.
“It was stinging,” Ollisonsaid, “but I fought through it.”
That almost seemed easy after Ollison completed his first season as a starting quarterback with 14 consecutive victories and a state championship. That’s something former Fairview quarterbacks Jim Youngblood, who signed with Arkansas out of high school, and Brandon Keaton, who led the Cardinals to the 2010 final, couldn’t do.
“Matthew is not even close to the same athlete those two guys were, but he gets the job done,” Camden Fairview Coach Buck James said. “He’s smart. He sees it. It’s like slow-motion to him.”
It seemed that way on most Friday nights this season.
Ollison completed more than 72 percent of his passes this season, threw for more than 2,500 yards. His 77-yard pass to Braxton Hoof down the visitor’s sideline on the second play of the third quarter Friday and an 8-yard pass to Jamie Smith later in the third quarter gave him 33 touchdown passes.
The Cardinals went into Friday averaging more than 47 points per game. All that after Ollison narrowly won a preseason battle for the starting job with sophomore Byron Keaton, Brandon’s younger brother.
“We thought, ‘Wow, which one of these guys is going to start this year?’ ” James said. “[Keaton] is a better athlete than Matthew is, but he’s just a 10th-grader. ... Matthew got hot and you had to stick with him.
“He’s been hot since Day1. He got hot in the first game and he stayed hot for 14 weeks.”
Ollison cooled off in the first half Friday - he was held to 4-of-5 passing for 41 yards - but he hit Hoof with the long pass early in the third quarter and led three more scoring drives.
His 49-yard pass to Deion Holliman moved the Cardinals to the Pioneers’ 4 and, after a false start, his 8-yard scoring pass to Smith gave Camden Fairview its first lead, 14-10.
A 41-yard pass to Hoof set up Holliman’s 37-yard touchdown run that made it 21-10 in the fourth quarter, and Holliman capped the scoring with a 31-yard run with 2:22 left.
Ollison, who didn’t play in Camden Fairview’s 2010 state final loss to Greenwood after breaking his leg, said there wasn’t much talk this week about losing in the 2009 and 2010 finals. But the memories were there.
“It means a lot,” he said. “We came here, we didn’t finish. [Now] we’re the group that came through and knocked the door down.”
Sports, Pages 26 on 12/01/2012