For the second time this season, the Bison hit the Big Red with a heavy dose of running back Zane Emurian, as he ran wild tonight to lead the home team to a 54-22 win and the Shenandoah District JV championship. He was able to constantly get to the corner, usually the right corner in front of his delighted home fans, and the Gladiators just never found the key to stopping him. My guess is that he scored at least five touchdowns tonight and even added a conversion or two.
The score might actually be somewhat deceiving because the Big Red did stick with the Bison for the first half as they had some impressive runs of their own. In fact, with just under a minute left in the first half, Joel Maybush executed a beautiful broken-field run in which he escaped from a shoestring tackle around the Bison 20, kept his balance and rolled into the end zone to complete about a 50 yard TD. The Gladiators then added the two-point PAT and at that point, it looked like they were right back in the game at 26-22.
But in those remaining few seconds, # 3 broke away for another of his explosive runs and the Gap took a 32-22 lead into the locker room. They were then able to wear down the Big Red in the second half and pull away to the more impressive sounding score.
They scored twice in the third quarter, one helped along by an RHS fumble, and for the icing on the cake, another Gladiator bobble late in the fourth was returned on a scoop and score for the final TD of the game.
As the top two JV teams in the district this season, each team has given their fans reason to be optimistic in the coming years. If Emurian turns out to be as good as he appeared in the two games against RHS, he could be one of the best Bison backs in school history.
On the Riverheads side, Rylan Payne was their most consistent scorer this year and he also scored tonight on a nice 35 yard run right up the gut. That came in the second quarter and cut the lead at that point to 20-14. Back in the first quarter, Maybush had scored from about 8 yards out, but the Gladiators sliced the PAT kick slightly to the left and lost the chance to take a 7-6 lead.
So even though tonight did not lead to the desired result for the Big Red, those two running backs will join an already full stable next year, when most of the current backs on the varsity team will also return. So the point is that both these programs are on solid ground and we will be hearing from these younger guys quite a bit, possibly as early as next season.
But for now, let's see what happens Friday night for the two varsity teams. Riverheads will be hosting Stuarts Draft in a much-anticipated Region 2 B opener where everybody wants to see if the Cougars' 42-14 win over the Big Red earlier was a fluke, or a realistic sign of the difference between the two teams this year. The Bison will also host a game this Friday, as they are the number three seed in Region 1-B and will host Franklin, which will need to travel around 200 miles one way for that contest.
Best of luck to both and let's see if we can bring some regional and maybe even state titles back to Augusta County this season.
