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Gambler mentality could provide edge against Varina

Published: September 30, 2008
By Charlie Leffler

  Chris Moneymaker, Joseph Hachem and Greg Raymer, make room at the table because some people might start getting the impression that there is a new gambler making his run.

  First year Lee-Davis head coach Jason Meade has yet to qualify himself for high stakes gambling, but indications so far are that the man has the mentality to out-think and out-play his opponents.

  On Friday night, while nearly every other school in the area postponed their football games due to the threat of bad weather, Lee-Davis created a splash by strong-arming Armstrong for a 43-6 Capital District opening victory.  Lee-Davis took a gamble to take to a wet field where few others dared, but the payoff could provide an added edge and rake in the chips for the Confederates later this week at Varina. 

  Meade’s reasoning for playing the game as scheduled was simple. “It’s Friday night football,” he said. “We play on Fridays.”

  However, the underlying advantage of playing the game on Friday as scheduled meant Lee-Davis did not deviate from its routine, which could pay off this Friday’s high-stakes battle at Varina, who played their reain-dealayed game at Atlee on Monday. “There’s going to be a lot of people upset they didn’t get it in tonight and they’ve got a short week next week,” Meade said without naming names. Meade knows from his time at Highland Springs how hard it is on a team to adjust to a short week. “You know, playing on Monday night’s tough,” he said. “We did it at Highland Springs more than once and it’s tough. It makes for a short week and now we’re back on our regular schedule, nothing changes for us.”

  Add to that, the fact that Varina may be in for a tougher than expected game against rapidly improving Atlee and the table could be set for Lee-Davis to pull off a monumental upset of the state’s No. 7 team on Friday night.

  Yet, the important thing for Meade is that his team’s routine remained the same. “I don’t know that it’s an advantage, but once again, we focus so much on Lee-Davis that I’m sure (Varina’s) Coach Brown is concerned about it,” Meade said. “But to us, it’s not an advantage or a disadvantage. It allows us to do what we normally do week-in and week-out.”

  But first, the Confederates needed to take care of business against Armstrong.Though the Wildcats came intot the contest out-matched, in the rainy and slippery conditions under which the game was played, anything could happen.
  In the steadily falling drizzle, both Lee-Davis and Armstrong went three-and-out on their initial possessions, but when the Confederates got their hands on the ball a second time they went to their ground game and the strong legs of Tucker Walton.  Walton, who rushed for 105 yards on the night, carried Lee-Davis to the 18-yard line and from there, quarterback Will Burton took over. With 7:32 left in the first quarter, Burton lofted the ball to the left corner of the end zone where Matt Marlowe leapt past the defense of Armstrong’s Brandy Thornton to pull down the first score of the night.

  As he has done all season, Meade rolled the dice for a two point conversion on the ‘Muddle-Huddle’ rather than kick the extra point. But the run by David Fetter came up just short of the goal line leaving the Confederates with a 6-0 lead.

  While sloppy exchanges were the norm of the day due to the wet weather, Armstrong had an especially bad case of the bumbles, resulting in little offensive production throughout the first half.

  Such was not so much the case for Lee-Davis who on their next possession marched down the field behind the strong running of Burton and Walton.

  Throughout the evening, Walton drug a horde of Armstrong defenders with him as they advanced the ball. From the one-yard line, Walton powered through the line for a score with 3:49 remaining in the first.

  For Meade, Walton’s power running was nothing new. “That’s what we see every day in practice,” he said. “Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday that’s what he gives us. It was nice to see him do it to somebody else. I tell you, he runs over our tails all day long.”

  On the conversion, Fetter found Brandon Angus on a pass for a 14-0 Lee-Davis lead.

  The score remained unchanged until seven minutes left in the first half. After recovering an Armstrong fumble on the 10-yard line, Angus added a field goal for a 17-0 lead.

  With 1:53 remaining in the half, Armstrong was forced to punt once again and Lee-Davis’ Josh Rogodozinski raced in to get a hand on the first of his two blocked punts on the night. Tyler Moody scooped up the ball and muscled it to the six. Two plays later, Burton swept around the right side to score from the four and make the lead 23-0 after a failed kick.

  “We change our punt return every week and we put in a block this week,” Meade said.  “Obviously we were successful with it. The kids did a nice job of coming hard.”

  On Armstrong’s next possession, T.J. Harvey got Lee-Davis’ second blocked punt which was recovered at the seven, but with 3.4 second remaining, the Confederates could not score.

  Coming out in the second half, Armstrong showed renewed energy and Lee-Davis a lack of focus. With the rain slowing to a stop, Wildcats’ quarterback Mark Robinson drove his team the length of the field and scored on perfectly thrown pass to Tyee Williams in the corner of the end zone to trim the lead to 23-6.

  Meade was obviously not happy with his teams’ effort. “We lost some assignments there in the second half,” he said. “We lost a little focus there in the second half but we still played hard.”

  The Lee-Davis defense took Meade’s admonishment to heart and held strong for the remainder of the game. After a scoreless third quarter, Lee-Davis exploded in the fourth for three touchdowns over a 49 second period.

  The run started with 9:50 left in the game when Harvey pulling down a four-yard pass from Burton for a 29-6 lead. 

  Twenty seconds later, Angus stepped in front of a Robinson pass for his second interception of the night and took this one 26 yards to the house to make the lead 37-6. 

  Twenty-nine seconds after that, Rogodozinski blocked his second punt and Moody fell on it in the end zone to create the final score.

  Overall, Meade was happy with his team’s play but saw areas that continue to bother him. “We’ve got little things to clean up,” he said. “We’re getting ready to enter week five, halfway point of the season. Three weeks of camp, we’re eight weeks in and we should be doing these little things better than we’re doing them right now. It’s nice knowing that you can play hard and still get a victory, knowing that you still have stuff to improve on, but we’ve got a lot of film to watch on Monday.”

Armstrong   0 0 6 0 – 6
Lee-Davis   14 9 0 20 – 43

LD – Marlowe 18 pass from Burton (run failed)
LD – Walton 1 run (Feter pass to Angus)
LD – FG Angus
LD – Burton 4 run (kick failed)
A – Williams 26 pass from Robinson (pass failed)
LD – Burton to Harvey 4 pass (Stevens kick)
LD – Angus 26 interception return (Stevens kick)
LD – Moody blocked punt recovered in the end zone (kick failed)

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