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After a crazy finish to the first half and a rough third quarter, Fork Union was getting pushed back to the ropes by Benedictine and sat just one more blow away from its season likely ending. Micky Sullivan knew it to the point that the finality of his impending retirement began to sink in.
“Honest to God, I was standing on the sidelines in the third quarter thinking this is the last game I’ll ever coach and thinking about what I was going to say to the kids after the game,” the Blue Devils coach said.
But trailing 27-16 in the last minutes of the third quarter, FUMA simply exploded. Led by running back Nick King and quarterback Christian Hackenberg’s effort in the ground game, the Blue Devils came to life thanks to an 8-yard rushing touchdown from King. And five minutes later, almost as if each big play was no problem, Fork Union held a commanding 21-point lead midway into the fourth quarter. Behind an explosion of 29 unanswered points, and a 45-27 win, Sullivan and his seniors don’t have to wonder about their last games. They’ve made it to the last possible game of the year, the VISAA Division 1 championship.
“All of the sudden they decided to play. This team, they’ll fight you, they don’t quit. They battle. That’s just what they do,” Sullivan said. “They’ve figured it out a bunch of times this season, we’ve been behind a bunch. They just plug away and somebody makes a great play.”
At 16-14 late in the second with FUMA out front, it and Benedictine were simply trading drives back-and-forth. Inside of two minutes until the break and having yet to punt, the Blue Devils looked to pad their lead. A Hackenberg pass to Roma Michael had Fork Union driving into Cadets territory when the momentum sunddenly swung in Benedictine’s favor with a fumble coming just as Michael was being brought to the ground, and Mikey McDonald was there to scoop it up and take it 60-yards to the house.
In the third, Fork Union drove down into the redzone but had a 10-yard Hackenberg rushing touchdown called back because of holding. Moments later the Cadets came up with an interception in the endzone. A 4-yard Corey Downey rushing TD later and it was 13 unanswered points for Benedictine with just a few minutes to go until the fourth.
Everything changed after that. Hackenberg and King’s legs got things back to a one-possesion game to finish of the third. The FUMA defense then finally got to Cadets quarterback Bryce Harper, something they struggled with until the fourth quarter. After recording a sack the previous play, Blue Devils linebacker T.J. Dudley then hauled in an interception to set up his team with a short field.
“I kind of just stayed home,” Dudley said. “(Defensive Coordinator Sam Mavrick) always says for us to keep our heads on a swivel. I saw their running back just stop, so I just kind of scooted right in front of him and the ball was thrown right to me.”
Hackenberg took it and connected with Michael Guerci for a 17-yard touchdown followed by a 2-point convert to Chrystian Brown to put Fork Union up 31-27.
“I think the momentum from the drive earlier carried over,” Hackenberg said. “So we went to a play that we’d had success with and then Guerci just made a great play on the ball.”
Once again the FUMA defense stood tall, this time forcing a Benedictine punt. After a block from Brett Seigel and easy recovery by Michael in the endzone, it was suddenly 38-27 with more than seven minutes to go in the game.
“I was just basically running hard at him, but I didn’t think I was going to get there,” Seigel said of the blocked punt. “I saw their punter, charged at him and got the block. I got a lot of it, I think I got some ankle.”
Benedictine’s had one last breath on offense as they marched down to first and goal just inside the Fork Union 10. But on fourth and goal, Hamilton was stopped and knocked out at the 1-yard line to force a turnover on downs. The very next play King picked up 99 of his 143 yards on a rush up the middle where it appeared he was stopped at the 2-yard line, but then squirted out with nothing but room to run to make it 45-27 and wrap up the win.
Hackenberg finished the game with 196 yards in the air and 105 on the ground and three passing TDs. To start the scoring in the first, he hit wide out Austin Stone on a short pass which the fellow senior took for 53 yards and the score. Brown also had a first half TD reception a beautiful piece of foot work on a 6-yard strike from Hackenberg to cut it 14-13 in Benedictine’s favor. Dylan McMormack added a 19-yard field goal in the second quarter to put his team up 16-14.
The Blue Devils (10-2) head back to the state title game for the second time in three years. They will head to Lynchburg to face Liberty Christian Academy. In the regular season meeting between these two LCA held on in the finals seconds to avoid overtime after a missed field, 36-33. The Bulldogs are the defending state champions. The last team that beat them in the playoffs was Fork Union, which it won at Lynchburg in 2010 during the semifinals before taking down Collegiate for the championship one week later.
“I read an article on Bill Curry (the long time college coach currently at Georgia State) about this week being his last game,” Sullivan said. “It’s interesting what he said so I’m going to steal, plagiarize it. ‘You start out with months to go. Then it’s weeks to go. Now it’s days to go.’ It really is kind of neat. We’ve won 10 games in school history maybe three times since 1972. Now we’ve got a chance to win 11 and that’s never been done. It’d be a great way to finish not just for me, but for these seniors.”
