The James River football season ended with a 4-6 overall record as the Knights dropped a 33-22 decision to Giles in Pearisburg last Friday night. With the loss River finished 12th in the Region 2C rankings, failing to make the playoffs.
“We had a real young team and that came back to bite us,” said coach Tim Jennings, who completed his first season as head coach of the Knights. “We had a lot of young kids and when you have a running team and lose your starting tailback (Luke Peay) in the second game of the season that doesn’t help.”
River trailed 19-0 at the half at Giles and never could mount any offense in the first half.
“We didn’t start playing until the second half,” said Jennings. “We kept shooting ourselves in the foot and giving them short fields by our mistakes. We have to play 48 minutes, and that’s something we struggled to do this year.”
Dyllan McAllister’s 17-yard scoring run cut the lead to 19-6 in the third quarter but Giles returned the kickoff 74 yards to negate that, then went up 33-6 early in the fourth quarter. Khalique White scored on an eight-yard run with 2:02 remaining and Kevin Theimer caught a 31-yard TD pass from McAllister with just four seconds left to make the score more respectable.
Surprisingly, River had the edge in total yards in this game, 291 to 278. While Giles held a 248 to 33 edge in rushing yards the Knights had 258 passing yards to just 30 for Giles. McAllister completed 15 of 28 passes, including six to Theimer for 143 yards. Kevin Austin had four catches for 60 yards and Jack Voight had three for 34. River’s rushing leader was Hunter Forbes with 24 yards on nine attempts.
Defensively, Theimer led the Knights with 17 tackles, including 11 solos. Theimer ended the season with 119 total tackles and 57 solos along with three picks, four tackle for losses and five pass break ups.
Logan Campbell and Levi Walker had eight tackles each at Giles while Voight had seven and Addison McCaleb had six. Tanner Dillow had his fourth interception of the season.
The Knights will graduate 11 seniors. They had 15 juniors and nine sophomores on the varsity roster so Jennings will have a solid group to work with next year.
“We’ll get back in the weight room in a month or so,” he said. “We’d rather be playing this week instead of watching, but we have good kids on the team who will benefit from the experience they gained this year.”