The James River and Glenvar football teams played for the Virginia Media Rocking Chair in Springwood last Friday. One team rocked after the game and one team got rocked during the game.
Glenvar laid a 56-0 hurting on James River, the Knights’ worst loss since they fell by an identical score against Lord Botetourt in the 2016 season opener. Glenvar’s Nick Sebolt ran the opening kickoff back for a touchdown and that set the tone for the evening.
“I don’t think we were ready,” said River coach Tim Jennings. “I thought we had our best week of practice all year, but then they came out and punched us in the stomach with that opening kickoff. They’re good. We knew we had to play a perfect game to beat them, but the big plays killed us.”
River only trailed 7-0 after the first quarter and it looked like this would be a competitive game. The Knights were called for a questionable roughing the punter that kept one Glenvar drive alive but they recovered and were hanging tough despite struggling to move the ball on offense.
Then Glenvar owned the second quarter. Three rushing touchdown on consecutive series gave the Highlanders a 28-0 lead, and on the last play of the half Highlander quarterback Aiden Wolk connected with Sebolt for a 61-yard TD. The Highlander receiver broke several tackles and crossed the goal line as time expired.
“That was a real morale killer,” said Jennings. “We have to bring him down in that situation, and we had our chances.
“That was pretty much the game right there. I told them at halftime, ‘the end of this game is written, now we’ll see how we will finish.’”
Glenvar scored three more times in the second half with the game clock running continuously. The final stats weren’t pretty as Glenvar held a 244-35 edge in rushing and a 103-31 edge in pass yards. The Knights had minus yards at the half.
Craig Bowyer had 34 yards on 11 carries to lead the River rushers. River was three for 13 passing and first string quarterback Dyllan McAllister went out with an injury in the first half.
Defensively, Kevin Theimer led the Knights with seven tackles and Logan Campbell had six. Theimer, Campbell, Levi Walker, and Kevin Austin all had tackles for losses.
With the loss River dropped to 2-3 on the season with a trip to Alleghany this Friday.
