DATE: Saturday, November 22, 1997           TAG: 9711220667

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C6   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JAY LIDINGTON, STAFF WRITER

DATELINE: HAMPTON                           LENGTH:   34 lines

THE BOOKERS COULDN'T GET A BOUNCE TO GO THEIR WAY

Over the course of a football season, there are games when some things just don't go a team's way.

Then there's what happened to Booker T. Washington on Friday night in the Eastern Region Division 5 championship game, a 40-0 loss to Hampton.

The Crabbers owned the Bookers, outgunning and outdefending the Eastern District's top team. Hampton also seemed to have a monopoly on fluky plays.

In the first quarter, Hampton's Darnell Hollier fumbled an option pitch from quarterback Ronald Curry at the Booker T. 30-yard line but picked it up without missing a step on his way to a 33-yard touchdown.

``The whole defense just stopped and looked,'' said Bookers linebacker Kelvin Fuller. ``Nobody was going after the ball.''

After Curry found Bobby Blizzard in stride for a 20-yard touchdown pass with 1:13 left in the first half, his cousin, Almondo Curry, took a bad snap on the extra point and scrambled for several seconds before finding Blizzard for a two-point conversion.

At the opening of the second half, Booker T. appeared ready to make a go of it, intercepting a Ronald Curry pass on Hampton's first possession. But Hampton struck back when Hollier picked off a Dominic Perry pass. Three plays later, the Crabbers scored and completed a two-point conversion to make it 33-0.

``We knew we had to come in and go mistake-free,'' Fuller said. ``But we came in and did everything coach put on the board and told us not to do.''

``They have some great athletes and they do a great job with their kids,'' said Bookers coach Larry Stepney. ``But with every whuppin' like tonight, there comes a lesson, and we learned ours.''

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