FAYETTEVILLE — It may have been a season interrupted, but Arkansas pledge Sean Michael Flanagan seems to be making up for lost time.
An injury sidelined Flanagan for three games, but he has been back the last three contests for Charleston (9-0), which will finish the regular season by hosting Mansfield on Friday.
“He played really, really good football weeks one, two and three, but had a first degree separation of his AC joint in week three,” Charleston coach Greg Kendrick said. “He comes back in week seven, touches the ball six times and scores on four of them. He ran the opening kickoff back, had an 82-yard touchdown, a 64-yard touchdown, a 40-yard touchdown and a 30-yard touchdown. He’s really, really explosive.
“Against Atkins, he touched the ball twice and had two receptions for 99 yards and two touchdowns, and then had two touchdowns against Perryville last week.”
Flanagan has rushed 22 times for 62 yards and a touchdown; caught 21 passes for 474 yards and 7 touchdowns; recorded 32 tackles, a sack, 3 quarterback hurries and a pass break up on defense; and on special teams has a 33.5 yards per punt average, returned 3 punts for 150 yards and has 3 kickoff returns for 175 yards and 2 touchdowns.
“He has just played electric football for us,” Kendrick said. “The first two games he came back, he touched the ball eight times and scored on six of those touches.
“He just adds an explosive component to our offense that we didn’t have in his absence. He’s a kid the likes of which I have never had the opportunity to coach before in terms of that aspect.”
Charleston will host Mountain View in first round of the Class 3A state playoffs next week.
“We are starting to get healthy at the right time and started executing at the right time,” Kendrick said. “We have played our best halves of football the last two weeks against Atkins and Perryville — two quality football teams — and so that has been an encouraging thing.
“We have played a tough nonconference schedule with Ozark and Dardanelle and kind of got banged up, but coming back into conference play we started getting more and more healthy and are close to being 100 percent, getting guys back at the right time and really playing our best football heading into the playoffs.”