In their final regular season home game, the Senior Night Gladiators raced to a 56-0 halftime lead and pretty much just let the Storm have fun in the second half with a clock that ran even faster than normal. With the win, RHS moves to 8-0 on the season and that November 8th Battle of the Unbeatens with Stuarts Draft is looking more and more like a reality.
The Gladiator ground game was unstoppable as just about every rushing touchdown involved an untouched ball carrier. They also experimented with the pass a lot more than usual as senior quarterback Elijah Dunlap tossed three touchdown passes. It simply came down to a case of the Gladiators being so much more fundamentally sound than the visitors, even though to their credit, the obviously frustrated Storm kept their composure and played hard to the end.
Cy Cox put the first Big Red score on the board as he raced untouched around left end from about 57 yards out on RHS' fourth play from scrimmage. The duo of Zac Smiley and Braeson Fulton then took over, scoring six of the remaining seven Gladiator TDs.
Smiley was especially impressive and according to one media source, he rushed for over 200 yards on just six carries, scoring on three of them. That is an awesome average considering that one of his scores was only a three-yard run, but he set it up himself with about a 60-yard gallop. And that rushing total does not even include the 38 yard touchdown pass that he hauled in for his first score following the Cox TD.
And if you want to hear something that will really strike fear in the hearts of future Gladiator opponents, he was not even the "only" Smiley doing damage tonight as younger brother Noah was pressed into extra duty due to an injury and the sophomore scored on a nice run of his own. And by the way, "younger" brother in this case does not necessarily mean "little" brother. Let's just say that both of them know their way around the weight room.
Fulton's two touchdowns each came through the air and I believe that gives him five TD catches on the season. He was one of 12 seniors saluted tonight during the pre-game festivities.
All the scores just mentioned, not to mention a perfect 8 for 8 on PATs from Peyton Skillman, came in the first half as it was one of those cases where anything that could go wrong did go wrong for the visitors. They lost at least three fumbles in the first half, they simply could not tackle anybody anywhere on the field, when they did come close to scoring on a long pass they were called for offensive pass interference, and in the worst news of the night, one of their better players, Naquanne Johnson, was knocked out of the game on a scary blindside block during one of Smiley's big runs.
The block was hopefully not intentionally vicious but it did draw a justifiable roughness penalty and led to a 20 minute delay while Johnson was attended to. Between the injury and all the scoring, the first half did not end until 8:20. (Kickoff was at 7:00.)
To make up for that, the officials made an executive decision to run the second-half clock even faster than the usual running clock that Virginia uses. They ran it during extra point attempts, during switches in possession, and I wouldn't have been surprised if they had run it between the quarters. But by that time, most of the crowd wanted to get home for the World Series anyway.
With Riverheads using all subs in the second half, nobody cared that the Storm got on the board a couple of times. I believe I am correct that Rik'avian Carey and Zach Boyd scored their two TDs and Boyd's especially was a very athletic catch in which he stretched out muscles he didn't even know he had to snag a slightly overthrown ball and score from about 50 yards out. All things considered, the Storms' dual-threat quarterback Will Dod did not have a bad game and displayed quite the arm. It just came down to the Staunton defense being totally unable to contend with anything Riverheads threw at them.
The Gladiators now travel to Buffalo Gap next Friday to face a Bison team that put 66 on the board tonight at Wilson. That score was 66-42 for those of you who had not heard, but if you think that was a high-scoring affair, did you hear about Page County's 82-52 win over Madison County? Kind of makes you wonder if anybody coaches defense any more, doesn't it? But heck these are high school kids.....let them score the points so they will have stories to tell their grandkids!
If Riverheads survives that visit to the Gap next Friday, and remember BG gave Stuarts Draft quite a scare, then the stage will likely be set for the Big One two weeks from tonight. While the Gladiators are tussling with the Bison, SD will be hosting this same Staunton team and a Cougar victory is pretty much assured in that one.
In closing, we hope some Staunton fans can post an update on Mr. Johnson. It was not clear from our side exactly what type injury he suffered.
The Gladiator ground game was unstoppable as just about every rushing touchdown involved an untouched ball carrier. They also experimented with the pass a lot more than usual as senior quarterback Elijah Dunlap tossed three touchdown passes. It simply came down to a case of the Gladiators being so much more fundamentally sound than the visitors, even though to their credit, the obviously frustrated Storm kept their composure and played hard to the end.
Cy Cox put the first Big Red score on the board as he raced untouched around left end from about 57 yards out on RHS' fourth play from scrimmage. The duo of Zac Smiley and Braeson Fulton then took over, scoring six of the remaining seven Gladiator TDs.
Smiley was especially impressive and according to one media source, he rushed for over 200 yards on just six carries, scoring on three of them. That is an awesome average considering that one of his scores was only a three-yard run, but he set it up himself with about a 60-yard gallop. And that rushing total does not even include the 38 yard touchdown pass that he hauled in for his first score following the Cox TD.
And if you want to hear something that will really strike fear in the hearts of future Gladiator opponents, he was not even the "only" Smiley doing damage tonight as younger brother Noah was pressed into extra duty due to an injury and the sophomore scored on a nice run of his own. And by the way, "younger" brother in this case does not necessarily mean "little" brother. Let's just say that both of them know their way around the weight room.
Fulton's two touchdowns each came through the air and I believe that gives him five TD catches on the season. He was one of 12 seniors saluted tonight during the pre-game festivities.
All the scores just mentioned, not to mention a perfect 8 for 8 on PATs from Peyton Skillman, came in the first half as it was one of those cases where anything that could go wrong did go wrong for the visitors. They lost at least three fumbles in the first half, they simply could not tackle anybody anywhere on the field, when they did come close to scoring on a long pass they were called for offensive pass interference, and in the worst news of the night, one of their better players, Naquanne Johnson, was knocked out of the game on a scary blindside block during one of Smiley's big runs.
The block was hopefully not intentionally vicious but it did draw a justifiable roughness penalty and led to a 20 minute delay while Johnson was attended to. Between the injury and all the scoring, the first half did not end until 8:20. (Kickoff was at 7:00.)
To make up for that, the officials made an executive decision to run the second-half clock even faster than the usual running clock that Virginia uses. They ran it during extra point attempts, during switches in possession, and I wouldn't have been surprised if they had run it between the quarters. But by that time, most of the crowd wanted to get home for the World Series anyway.
With Riverheads using all subs in the second half, nobody cared that the Storm got on the board a couple of times. I believe I am correct that Rik'avian Carey and Zach Boyd scored their two TDs and Boyd's especially was a very athletic catch in which he stretched out muscles he didn't even know he had to snag a slightly overthrown ball and score from about 50 yards out. All things considered, the Storms' dual-threat quarterback Will Dod did not have a bad game and displayed quite the arm. It just came down to the Staunton defense being totally unable to contend with anything Riverheads threw at them.
The Gladiators now travel to Buffalo Gap next Friday to face a Bison team that put 66 on the board tonight at Wilson. That score was 66-42 for those of you who had not heard, but if you think that was a high-scoring affair, did you hear about Page County's 82-52 win over Madison County? Kind of makes you wonder if anybody coaches defense any more, doesn't it? But heck these are high school kids.....let them score the points so they will have stories to tell their grandkids!
If Riverheads survives that visit to the Gap next Friday, and remember BG gave Stuarts Draft quite a scare, then the stage will likely be set for the Big One two weeks from tonight. While the Gladiators are tussling with the Bison, SD will be hosting this same Staunton team and a Cougar victory is pretty much assured in that one.
In closing, we hope some Staunton fans can post an update on Mr. Johnson. It was not clear from our side exactly what type injury he suffered.
