Clayton HS will take on the Providence Panthers this coming weekend in the single-school final in North Carolina, and maybe it's a bit of a surprise.

Broughton came into the semis having already beaten Clayton in the regular season, but if you want to be skeptical of Brought, you could point to Broughton's loss to Charlotte Catholic the week before. Certainly Clayton felt they had a shot.

"We love the Broughton players," said Clayton Head Coach JG van Graan. "They're out brothers and a good group of guys. But we haven't been able to beat them for three years. We have a great group of juniors who have been playing together for six or seven years, and they won every division except high school."

So they wanted to take down their buddies at Brought and did so, coming back from a 21-3 halftime deficit to win 27-26.

"So many things finally came together," said Van Graan. "For us the biggest thing we did was we started playing angry. We did a lot of work in the rucks in general, but in the first time we played Broughton we were not as quick o the rucks as we should have been."

They also had Cullen Cunningham this time. The regular Clayton scrumhalf didn't play in the first Broughton game, and his kicking had a lot to do with Clayton's success this time.

"He has a really good boot," said Van Graan. "We upped our kicking game and pinned them back, and that was one of the differences."

With a strong defensive effort from the entire team, but especially from inside center Garrett Hill (a Davenport commit), and Jack Van Graam causing problems as a loose forward, the Clayton comeback gives them a chance for that elusive state title.

But they have to take on a very solid Providence team that beat Charlotte Catholic last week.

Luke Cheramie scored two tries and Eddie Van Heerden and Josh Adams added tries in that providence win. With Reed Samson kicking the points, and with Van Heerden and Damian Piasecki leading the team in tackles with eight, they produced an impressive team effort.

Charemie and Harrison Hellner (both props, and flanker Lucas Silva were players of the game in the forwards, while Piasecki took the honors among the backs.

"We were outweighed by the Catholic scrum and our props held up all night," said Providence Head Coach Michael Cook. "They were dog tired at the end of the game."

With hooker Jake Lockhart making sure they had good possession in the scrum and lineout, Providence ran out to a 26-0 lead after 20 minutes. Then they started to play as if they had it sewn up, and Catholic scored three tries to make it interesting. The Panthers held on 26-17, but Cook said he was not happy with the finish.

"We didn't keep to our pattern of play and play the entire 70 minutes," he said. "Moving forward, we have to maintain composure and structure for the entire game. We can't afford to freelance and we must play better defense. Clayton will be a massive task for us.  We really respect what they have done as a club.  They have scored a lot of points this year and lost last year's state championship game on the last play."

Van Graan echoed the comments about respect.

"We are very respectful of Providence and how good they are," he said. "We'd like to win, but we don’t coach for the win. We coach for players to play their best and to show good sportsmanship. That's a big part of what we do."