Bridge Bowl redux: Bluffton, Hilton Head players relive their glory days

Hours before he and his teammates donned black jerseys and kneeled in a huddle Saturday night, Chad Malphrus's mind was on another game.

The "Mud Bowl," 2006.

With rain pouring down, he and other members of the Bluffton High School Bobcats football team played -- and lost 10-0 -- their inaugural game against the Hilton Head Island High School Seahawks. Some of those players had been teammates as freshmen, before Bluffton High was formed in 2005; they had waited a year for a chance to battle one another.

Other players, such as 2005 Hilton Head High alumnus Renaldo Mitchell, never got that chance.

On Saturday night, that changed.

Team captains Malphrus and Mitchell led squads of alumni onto the field at the Hardeeville Recreation Center to embrace their rivalries and friendships one more time.

"After the game, we'll be just like friends again," Mitchell, 27, said before the game. "But it's a totally different story when the pads go on."

Both teams, each with about 25 players in their late teens to early 30s, said they had no plans to spare one another on the field.

The first injury came only 15 minutes in.

A Bluffton player limped to the sidelines and pounded the ground with a fist in pain, or frustration. A few minutes later, he stretched out on his stomach, craning his neck to watch the game.

Tim Tanner said he only briefly worried about his son, Joseph, getting hurt. After all, the game was also a second chance for the 2011 Bluffton graduate, who sat out the last game of his senior year with a broken collar bone, his dad said.

"At least they've got equipment on," he said with a laugh. "And it's a way for them to have fun."

As Jarrod Hargrave said in an opening prayer, "We play for the bumps and bruises, and minimal injuries. We play for character."

Hargrave serves as regional manager for Alumni Football USA, which organized the event and provided the teams with gear.

One jersey, however, rested on the fence behind the Bluffton bench throughout the game. No. 71. It belonged to former Bluffton High wrestling star Phillip Scott, who died in a diving accident Oct. 10.

Most of the players attended his funeral before the game Saturday, and Hargrave said they planned to sign the jersey for the family. Many of them dedicated the game to Scott.

"It's about being part of something bigger than yourself," Hargrave said.

The game started slow, with no score an hour in.

That was too long for one fan, a young girl who cheered for her uncle as she gripped the chain link fence behind the Seahawks' bench.

"Even though they just started a little while ago, they should be getting points by now," McKenna Ladson, 6, said.

Hilton Head won Saturday's game, 12-6.

Both teams said before the game there would be no hard feelings, whoever won.

They donated the money raised to the Bluffton/Hardeeville Barracudas Football and Cheer Organization and hope to hold more alumni events in the future, possibly on home turf.

"You see a lot of guys on both sides getting fired up," Malphrus said. "But at the end of the day, everybody cares about each other. We're all still friends."

Follow reporter Rebecca Lurye on Twitter at twitter.com/IPBG_Rebecca.

This story was originally published October 18, 2014 at 10:00 PM with the headline "Bridge Bowl redux: Bluffton, Hilton Head players relive their glory days."