R.E. Lee (Staunton) and Riverheads

[Keith_Stone33]

Better get there early tonight as a source at the school told me 2000 tickets had been pre-sold this week for tonight's game.

I can't wait. FOOTBALL IS BACK!

 

[Keith_Stone33]

All the optimism I had going into the night has pretty well mellowed out! The turnout was great and there were more people at the stadium tonight than I have seen in YEARS on the Lee side. Riverheads looked like they were on a different level than the Leemen tonight and the score reflected that. Much sharper than the Leemen offensively, as their ground game had to have accumulated over 500 yards, with roughly 5 different players scoring. They played much more disciplined too.

I was not all that impressed with the Leemen tonight. Lots of bad snaps, bonehead plays, etc. I honestly think they will be lucky to finish the season at .500 because the Valley is bound to have improved this season, and I don't think they will beat Broadway, Waynesboro, Goochland, and probably Spotswood. I think they will beat Fort, Harrisonburg, and Rockbridge. But Wilson & TA- I don't know enough about them yet to say.

With that being said, I did see 1 positive thing from tonight and that was #11 Iyon Oravitz at Wide Receiver. Kid has some jets on him, and I would have liked to have seen them hit him with the deep ball more, but it's hard to set up a deep pass play when the defense isn't getting touched as they jailbreak through the LOS to the QB.

Best of luck to the Gladiators, you guys have a long season ahead and I will be surprised if you aren't playing in December this year. A state semi-final appearance at least.

 

[longtimerhsfan]

Well this long-awaited game is in the books and for those of you who have not heard, the Gladiators rolled to a surprisingly-easy 45-9 win over the mistake-prone Leemen before a huge crowd at Staunton Memorial Stadium. The simplest way to explain this one was that Riverheads was a disciplined, focused team that played in mid-to-late season form from start to finish, whereas the Leemen were just out of sync from the get-go and committed just about every kind of penalty, turnover, and mental mistake that it is possible to make in a game.

The Gladiator running game was in fine form as five different backs combined for six touchdowns. Ben Agnor opened the scoring with a sweep around the right side on the Big Red's second series. He later left the game with a knee injury but his departure only opened up the floodgates for a whole stable-full of backs to pick up where he left off. Before the night was over, Colt Miller and Brett Hostetler would score on wide-open runs through the middle of the Lee defense, Landon Diehl would twist his way to a score, and hard-charging Harrison Schaeffer would add the final two TD's after the issue had been decided. Junior Quarterback Chase Armstrong led the attack with a cool, calm and collected game in his first career start, and place-kicker Tristan Robson was 6 for 6 on PAT's and added a field goal.

Despite all that offensive firepower, it was a defensive play that deserved "Highlight Reel" honors for the victorious Big Red. Late in the third quarter, RHS was leading 31-9 and the Leemen were driving, with hopes of possibly posting another score that might have put them back in the game. QB Tavion Brown tossed one in to the end zone that was intercepted by RHS' Garrett Campbell. The normal decision might have been to take a knee and get the ball at the 20, but instead Campbell saw his chance and started up the left side of the field. He picked up a wall of blockers and made it all the way to the Lee 28 before being tackled. Two or three plays later, instead of a 31-16 score and some hope in the home stands, it was 38-9 and the fat lady started warming up her vocal cords.

Lee definitely appears to have some athletes and Brown has a cannon for an arm, as he attempted to demonstrate on several occasions. But the home team got no breaks at all from a brutal officiating crew and also just seemed totally disorganized. One area that they had almost constant trouble with was the shotgun snap to the quarterback and/or the punter. At least three snaps sailed deep into the backfield for huge losses, and many others were so low that Brown had to scrape them off the ground, thereby disrupting the timing of whatever play they might have been planning.

So it was a huge win for an equally huge contingent of Riverheads fans who made the trip into town and filled the stands as well as lined the fence. For the Leemen, some wins will come as they get more accustomed to their new coach and get some of the butterflies out. Riverheads hits the road again next week with a trip to Covington while the Leemen will visit Wilson where someone will get their first win of the season.

 

[Black Snake]

Questions about two Lee bonehead penalties -

2nd quarter - Lee advanced the ball to the Riverheads 10 or 15 yard line, the tackle was made, after a few seconds, a flag flew for an unsportsmanlike penalty called against Lee. A few plays later, it's 4th and one, & Lee gets a delay of game, & loses yardage on 4th & 6.

3rd quarter - Lee makes a nice gain on a pass, the ball is down at the Riverheads 6 or so yard line. But there's a flag at the Lee sideline, about where the quarterback threw the pass. The man sitting next to me said an unsportsmanlike penalty was called on a Lee player on the sidelines - he told me the player's number, I won't post it since I'm not sure what happened, but that player stood apart from his teammates the rest of the half.

Anyone know why the two unsportsmanlike penalties were called?

 

[rhsgrad]

The first flag was thrown because one of the lee players couldn't keep his mouth shut. The ref told him to knock it off and he kept on so flag was thrown. He had ample opportunity to walk away but instead cost his team 15 yards and a prime oppurtunity!

 

[longtimerhsfan]

Another aspect of this game that we haven't talked about was the huge size discrepancy. During the scrimmage season, there had been observations about how small this year's Riverheads team was, how their JVs were bigger than their varsity, etc.

Well that was definitely evident in this case as the Leemen outweighed RHS so significantly that they should have been able to push the Gladiators all the way back to Greenville. But instead Riverheads more than held its own in the trenches, and with 500 yards of offense, they obviously controlled the line of scrimmage all night.

Anyone have any updates on the injury to Agnor or the bell-ringing that Tyler Smith took? Hopefully no one else came up with any other after-effects today, as it was indeed a hard-hitting game.

 

[Trevor_Cash]

Bens father said on Twitter last night they believe it was just a bone bruise. Hoping for the best for him