The ACGC football team wrapped up their 2018 campaign Friday with a 43-14 defeat at Mt. Ayr. The game brought with it the final opportunity to hit the field for nine Charger seniors. The senior class, heralded throughout the season by first-year head coach Cody Matthewson, racked up a hefty portion of the team’s statistics both on the offensive and defensive side of the ball.

On the offensive side, seniors Ben Kingery, Gabe Rowley, and Spencer Grove accounted for 1,543 of the team’s 2,060 rushing yards. That includes Kingery’s 1,010 yard season, the first Charger to reach 1,000 yards in program history. The yardage also translated to points, as 74 of the team’s 116 total points came from Kingery and Rowley. On the defensive side, Kingery, Rowley, and Avery Wheatley were the top three tacklers. Five of the team’s seven interceptions were also corralled by seniors, with Wheatley and Easton Benson grabbing two and Dylan Soper getting one in the season’s final quarter.

Matthewson took an extensive portion of the final postgame comments last week to tout his senior class. “They set the expectation. The bar’s been set very high. We’re going to miss the heck out of them. I’m going to miss the heck out of them (and) the coaches are going to miss the heck out of them. That’s a great first group for me and I’m proud of each and every one of them.”

The Chargers finished with a record of 3-6, which tripled their win total from the previous two seasons combined. The other three seniors on the roster included Will Byars, Flavio Gonzalez, and Michael Ure.