By Drew Goodman / Scrimmageplay.com contributor
Out of the entire two-hours-plus that the Western Albemarle football team was on the field at Spotswood on Friday night, the Warriors will look back at a two-and-a-half-minute stretch in the first quarter that doomed the entire evening.
Shortly after Western forced the Trailblazers into a third down and long, Spotswood’s Joe Hamby was in the end zone following a 15-yard scoring strike.
The next two-and-a-half minutes was nothing short of Murphy’s Law for the visiting Warriors.
Western quickly fell into a 21-0 hole, and could not recover, en route to a disappointing 28-14 loss at Spotswood.
The defeat marks the Warriors’ (1-2) first-ever two-game losing streak in head coach Ed Redmond’s tenure in Crozet.
Though the fireworks began for Spotswood on its initial offensive drive, the Trailblazers gained a sense of newfound confidence on their first defensive series of the contest.
After allowing both of their first two opponents score on their opening drives, Spotswood’s defense made short work of Western Albemarle, and forced the Warriors into a three-and-out.
While there was nothing particularly special about how the Blazers accomplished the early stop, the offense took the field with a sense of purpose, and had the benefit of not playing from behind for the first time all season.
“We knew that we needed to come out hot, because sometimes we start slow,” said Spotswood running back Brady Dodson. “When we came out and stopped them, that was a big momentum change. We’re 0-2 in previous games on stopping teams on the first drive, so that was huge, and it gave us the momentum we needed, and we just took it from there.”
Dodson led Spotswood with 48 rushing yards, highlighted by a crucial third-down-and-short conversion late in the fourth quarter.
The Spotswood defense, which limited Western Albemarle to just 207 total yards, went right back to work following the opening three-and-out. The Trailblazers took advantage of a botched pitch on an option attempt, and recovered the fumble deep in Western Albemarle territory.
Then, Dodson capped off the short drive with a flip into the end zone from three yards out.
Already down by two touchdowns, Spotswood’s next score was the biggest backbreaker of the evening for WAHS.
Spotswood’s Alec High dialed long distance on the first play of the ensuing series, but Western’s Robert Sims reached out to get one hand on the ball. Unfortunately for the Warriors, Jonny Good managed to catch Sims’ deflection, and completed the 62-yard catch-and-run for a touchdown.
The Western defense gathered itself following the difficult first quarter. WAHS forced three consecutive Spotswood punts, and allowed the Trailblazers to find the end zone just once in the final 47 minutes of play.
Western’s defense finally put the Warriors on the board late in the second quarter, when Luke Tenuta jumped on top of a fumble in the Trailblazer end zone for a touchdown.
For the second week in a row however, the Western offense managed to just one TD.
The Warriors’ lone touchdown drive of the game was a good one though.
After the Western defense turned back Spotswood on the Warriors’ three-yard-line on fourth down and short, Derek Domecq methodically led his team down the field.
In the shadow of his own goalpost, Domecq ran 19 yards through the heart of the Blazer defense on the opening play of the drive. Domecq took several big hits during the scoring march, but the 210-pound quarterback managed to stay on his feet for big gains. The junior racked up nearly all 97 yards by himself, and polished off the drive with a two-yard plunge into the end zone, to cut the Spotswood lead to 14 points late in the third quarter.
“I think we have potential to do that. When we put our minds to it, I think we can establish the ground game and effectively move the ball,” Redmond said of the touchdown drive. “When you’re so inconsistent, that’s been our biggest thing right now is consistency on both sides of the ball.”
“We have the potential to be a better football team; we just have to try to figure some things out.”
Domecq averaged 5.2 yards per carry, while leading WAHS with 94 yards and a touchdown. The rest of Western’s rushing attack combined for just 26 yards on the night.
Domecq completed seven of 18 passes, and also tossed a pair of interceptions.
The Warriors had two opportunities in the fourth quarter to cut into the lead even further, but they could not convert a pair of third-down-and-shorts.
Friday’s defeat marked not only Western’s first losing streak in five years, but also the first time in which Warriors have had a losing record in the Redmond era.
The schedule does not get any easier, as Western Albemarle will next welcome Monticello to Crozet on September 23.
With a bye week on the docket, Redmond hopes to resolve several of his team’s issues before the start of district play.
“I think that anytime that you go into a bye on a loss, number one, you gotta check your mental psyche and make sure that you’re still believing,” Redmond noted. “That will be a challenge for us next week is to continue to grind and continue to strive for improvement, which we really need to improve. We’ve sort of gone backwards in the last two weeks, and we need to try to fix that.”
