The James River Knights will head to Glenvar this Friday for the annual battle for the Virginia Media Rocking Chair. River hopes to rebound after a disappointing loss to Stuarts Draft at home last Friday, where the Knights took a 10-0 lead into the fourth quarter but lost 24-10.
Virginia Media includes The Fincastle Herald and Salem Times-Register newspapers, covering both participants, and it’s been an annual rite since Glenvar left the Pioneer District for the Three Rivers in 1996. The two teams had been big rivals in the Pioneer and it added a little incentive to the game, even though the two teams were no longer district rivals.
Well, it’s 26 years later and the two teams are district rivals again, as James River has since joined Glenvar in the tough Three Rivers. Now the chair has even more meaning, as the game counts in the district record and is often a key source for points in the Virginia High School League playoff system.
The Knights haven’t had the chair since 2013, when they beat Glenvar 27-20. The Highlanders have an overall edge of 18-7 in the 25 previous years the rocker has been on the line. There have been several chairs since the initial rocker, and Glenvar bought a very sturdy chair and put a new paint scheme on it prior to the 2019 season, with all the scores from the past 25 years painted on the chair. It’s painted red, black, green and gold to represent both schools.
The Highlanders won last year’s game in Springwood in a thriller, 24-21, in a game played on Monday night after the first meeting was postponed. The Knights would like to return the chair to Springwood for the first time in nine years, as no one on this year’s team has ever sat in it.
“Our kids don’t really know much about the rocking chair, the series is so lopsided in their favor at this point the rivalry has sort of faded,” said River coach Tim Jennings. “We don’t really even talk about it, to be honest. We focus on trying to get the best game plan together and then just get better.
“Glenvar is the standard in the district, and so our goal is to try to emulate that as much as we can, but you have to be competitive to do that. We lost a close one last year so we’re hoping to be in a position to get over that hump on Friday. The Rocking Chair would only be an added bonus.”
Glenvar comes in at 3-2 and the Highlanders are on a three-game winning streak with victories over Cave Spring, Hidden Valley and Carroll County. The Knights are 2-2 but they could easily be 3-1 after letting one slip away last week. River led 10-0 into the fourth quarter before the visiting Cougars put up three unanswered touchdown runs by Landon Graber around a 32-yard field goal.
Photos by Jim & Regina Devinney
“They had a formation adjustment that required us to change our alignments on defense,” said Jennings about the disastrous fourth quarter. “Our lack of depth at some positions didn’t allow us the flexibility to play the run as we had been and still be sound against the pass. They didn’t change up much on defense, it really came down to us not executing as well as we had in the first half.”
River had taken a 10-0 lead at the half. Maddox Potter got the Knights on the board with a 31-yard field goal with 6:09 on the clock until halftime. Then Zeal Hammons hit Trey Taylor with a 41-yard TD pass with 1:31 until intermission and the Knights were in business.
After a scoreless third quarter, Stuarts Draft broke up the shutout just nine seconds into the fourth period with Graber’s first TD run. Bryce Dennison’s 32-yard field goal tied the game at 10-10 with 8:36 to go and two more Graber TDs in the final five minutes sent the Cougars home winners.
“Our kids played hard, we allowed the situation on Friday, particularly once they popped that first long run in the third, to change what we were doing on the field,” said Jennings. “We had some late penalties that cost us field position. They may have still scored, but we helped them a great deal by giving them very short fields down the stretch. We almost deflated, which is not what we are about. We continued to play, but we were the thermometer and not the thermostat.”
The Knights struggled to run the ball against Stuarts Draft, gaining just 26 yards on 20 attempts. They had 160 yards through the air with Hammons completing 11 of 23 passes. Jake Benson had four catches for 47 yards, Taylor had three for 50 and Brian Moran had three for 48.
On defense, Benson and John Austin led with 11 tackles each while Colin Cook had nine, Keegen Mundy and Levi Rock had seven each and Moran and George Toliver had six each. Cook had four tackles for losses.
This week’s game is the first of five district games as the Knights will play all five district opponents around a game at Giles on October 21.