Gilbert High School defeated Whitmire at its home field 31-12 Friday night.

“We are very proud of our effort,” Assistant Coach Chris Martin of WCS said of the night. “We didn’t play smart, but we played hard.”

Brandon Crumpton threw a 36-yard touchdown pass to Kyle Laveeza in the first half, opening up the scoring for Whitmire. The conversion attempt failed.

Martin said the Wolverines missed some opportunities to make it a close football game. For instance, Whitmire’s team dropped two interceptions which would have ended scoring drives on Gilbert’s part.

The assistant coach also pointed out that Gilbert is a much-improved team from last year, with a habit of throwing the ball a lot.

Gilbert led 24-6 at the half.

But Whitmire continued to put up its own points in the second half with Lee Sims throwing a 20-yard touchdown pass to Cory Robertson in the second half. The conversion attempt here also failed and closed out Whitmire’s end of the scoring.

“We played hard, but just had too many turnovers and didn’t play smart at times,” said Martin.

Whitmire (1-3) hosts Dixie this week for the Newberry County school’s homecoming game.

Martin says Dixie is a young team that in the past has relied on runners, and that this year seems to have shifted to the spread, and has been hit fairly hard by the flu.