Miami Springs football stuns Flanagan in TY Hilton coaching debut

In the grand scheme of things, it was only a spring football game.

And where spring games are concerned, they usually mean very little other than to give coaches a sneak preview of what they’re going to have to work with when they hit the sleds for real in August.

But the spring game for the Miami Springs Golden Hawks football team this year had a much different feel to it. That’s because it was the debut of new head coach and former alum T.Y. Hilton as the new head coach.

One of the greatest multi-sport athletes to ever come out of the school, Hilton, after graduating in 2008, went on to lift the FIU program (under then head coach Mario Cristobal) to great heights before turning in nine quality seasons as a wide receiver for the Indianapolis Colts, making the Pro Bowl four different times.

Numerous Hawks alumni you would normally never see at a spring game dotted the sideline, curious to see if Hilton’s arrival might mean a new era of success for a football program that has made exactly one postseason appearance in the state playoffs over the last 30 years.

What a show they got.

After floundering around and looking like the struggling program it’s been over the years in the first half, falling behind the Falcons 14-0 at the break, the Hawks came storming back in the second half to pull out a dramatic 21-14 victory at Flanagan High School in Pembroke Pines.

Dramatic because, just when it looked like the game would end in a 14-14 tie, the Hawks showed a flair for excitement when they scored on the final play of the game to pull out a 21-14 victory.

With just nine seconds left in the game and the Hawks 39 yards away from the end zone, quarterback Marcus Smith dropped back and hit Victwon Miller in the right flat. The play was designed to just pick up a few more yards to get Springs closer to the end zone and for Miller to get out of bounds giving the Hawks one final play.

But Miller had other ideas. After catching the ball, he juked one Flanagan defender, then broke out of the grasp of another and broke free, tight-roping his way down the sidelines and into the end zone as the clock struck triple zeroes. The euphoric Springs bench emptied and headed straight for the end zone to celebrate with Miller.

“Just wanted to try and make a play to help my team,” said Miller as he was being mobbed by his teammates.

“You all stuck with it, I knew you had it in you,” yelled Hilton to his team in the post-game huddle. “Now we have to build on this and move forward from here.”