On so many levels, the Louisa County football team took a step forward. For starters, the Lions honored a fallen comrade, Jaden Athey, who died last December in a tragic car crash. And of course, there’s the matter of coach Mark Fischer marking this his last season running the show. Yes there was a little rust for a team that has high hopes, but a 41-7 win over Courtland in the home opener put things in perspective for what this team expects of itself in 2017.
“Tonight we did a lot of things in a number of formations and we didn’t play all that well up front so we’ll go back in film and figure that out, but we really just missed a tick on a couple of plays and these are things that we can spit shine and polish,” Fischer said. “We showed we might be able to pass some and nobody expects that from Louisa, right? So I’m excited.”
For the players, getting the bitter taste of a first round playoff loss and getting on the winning side, both for their coach and their former teammate meant a lot.
“For coach Fischer, this is his last year coaching us, and then we’ve got our teammate, Jaden who couldn’t be here because of the accident, we’re just playing this season for those guys,” said senior quarterback Malik Bell.
After an initial punt to start the game, the Lions broke off a 20-0 run in the first quarter to put this game out of reach quickly.
It began with a short field as the Louisa defense forced the first of many Courtland 3-and-outs followed by a punt. The Lions went up 7-0 when Bell hit David Sharpe on a screen pass and the senior receiver worked it into a 24-yard touchdown reception with 7:15 left in the first.
“I know if we can get one of the dangerous short guys out into open sight, it’s going to be big and so that’s what we did there,” Bell said. “(Sharpe) got into open space and then did what he does. We have more weapons this year. I trust my wide receivers and they trust me. I want to get them the ball.”
After another 3-and-out, the Lions marched downfield on the legs of Bell, Job Whalen and Raquan Jones with Whalen capping the eight play drive with a 5-yard touchdown. The Lions forced the first of their four turnover on defense with Robby Guinn recovering a fumble on the next Courtland drive. That turned into a 20-0 lead with Bell carrying defenders over the goalline on a 14-yard run with 1:00 left in the first.
“We got lucky in some regard that they weren’t all really forced, Courtland made some mistakes with fumbled snaps, but year we’ll take them,” Fischer said. “But as a whole I was just very, very pleased with the defensive production tonight. Across the board at every position, we were there.”
The next turnover came from Bell who picked off a pass and set up a short field with his return. He then punched in a 7-yard rush to make it 26-0 going into the break.
Not much changed in the second. The Lions defense kept Courtland out of the redzone until the last minute of the fourth quarter. Whalen picked up his second rushing touchdown of the night with 2:49 left in the third quarter to inflate things to 34-0 following a successful 2-point convert.
“This is a great feeling, being seniors, a lot of us have been with Coach Fischer for four years and we’re all doing this together,” Whalen said.
With the second team in, the Lions made it 41-0 with Jarrett Hunter breaking off a swift 36-yard run. The Cougars managed to break up the shutout with six seconds left on a 6-yard touchdown run.
Louisa (1-0) heads to face Chancellor next week on the road.
