Star-Exponent Sports Blog

Sports Blog
Published: November 5, 2008

Football fans in Culpeper will want to keep their eyes on two teams looking for their first win of the season on Friday. Obviously Culpeper County High School (0-9) is going into this week’s game with Stonewall Jackson hoping to go out on a high note. The Raiders have also struggled this season and a victory would be a deserving reward for all the Blue Devils that stuck out the tough season and worked hard all season long.

The other team that would make folks in Culpeper celebrate if it pulls off its first win is Warhill. The Lions are 0-9 and play Tabb (7-2) to close out the season. If Tabb wins it earns the fourth spot in the Region I playoffs. If Warhill pulls off an upset and Eastern View can beat Martinsburg on Friday, the Cyclones would still have an outside shot an a playoff spot. Other factors would play into whether or not the Cyclones make the postseason, but the bottom line is if Tabb wins Eastern View is out.

— SHANE METTLEN (11/5/2008)

Culpeper has a had a tough season on the football field, but that doesn’t mean the Blue Devils are without at least one college prospect to keep on eye on.

Offensive lineman John Ross Hawkins has had to deal with injury and illness this season, but has still been hearing from colleges big and small. Hawkins has visited William & Mary, who also had a coach at Friday’s game against Battlefield. He’ll soon visit Elon and has heard from Ball State, Penn, Mississippi State and JMU, among others. Smaller schools such as Shenandoah, Ferrum and Christopher Newport are also heavily interested in having the 6-7, 300-pound play for them next year. Ferrum has offered an academic scholarship and a grant-in-aid (Div. III schools can’t offer athletic scholarships).

Hawkins chances of landing a Division I scholarship were also improved last month when Kory Gough, an offensive linemen out of Liberty HS, committed to Virginia Tech, potentially opening up 18 scholarship offers for other lineman prospects.

Hawkins has also been invited to play in an all-star game in Hawaii this June.

— SHANE METTLEN (11/4/2008)

I’d be willing to bet a pretty penny that most college football coaches didn’t know Eastern View High School existed two months ago. That’s at least partly because it didn’t really exist four months ago, but also because college football coaches haven’t had a lot of incentive to keep tabs on the Culpeper school system.

Well, thanks to Stevie Strother and his incredible season (1,633 yards, 21 touchdowns and counting) coaches from Boise to Myrtle Beach and plenty of points in between are familiar with the new school. Boise State and Coastal Carolina—which is actually in Conway, S.C., but that’s right outside Myrtle Beach – are just two of the schools that have been keeping EVHS coach Greg Hatfield’s phone line busy hoping to find out more about Strother.

“It seems like I’m getting a phone call a day from programs,” Hatfield said. “They say they saw his tape and they really like him. There’s a lot of Division I football programs interested and his name is getting out there more.”

Maryland, UNLV, Northern Iowa, James Madison, Temple, Southern Illinois, Georgia Southern, Northern Illinois are also on the list of programs that have expressed serious interest in Strother in the past few weeks. Virginia, Virginia Tech, North Carolina and Syracuse were also on the radar for Strother earlier in the season, though the Cavaliers are running out of scholarships for the class of 2009 and already have three in-state running backs committed.

Some smaller schools are also showing interest in other Cyclones. Division II Shepherd has sent coaches to Eastern View games and shown interest in defensive back Mo Safren, tackle Heath Brown and linebacker Blake Smith. Shenandoah hosted the Cyclones for a walk through practice last week and is interested in some EVHS players and Hampden-Sydney invited the players to a local alumni dinner.

We’ve also heard that someone from the JMU coaching staff should be in town for tonight’s Eastern View game against Kettle Run.

— SHANE METTLEN (10/31/2008)

RIvals.com reported this week that Virginia Tech picked up a commitment from Liberty offensive lineman Kory Gough. Gough, who checks in at 6-6, 260 pounds had scholarship offers from Arkansas, Marshall, East Carolina, JMU and others, but was most impressed by the Hokies. Interestingly Gough becomes the first player out of the Culpeper-Fauquier-Madison-Orange County area to land at Tech in recent years.

Earlier this year I wrote a story about how Virginia was putting more effort into recruiting the area along the Route 15 corridor that includes the counties mentioned above. The Cavaliers already plucked Terrence Fells-Danzer and Curt Orshoski out of Culpeper and Kyle McCartin from Fauquier. Then the Cavs picked up 2009 commitments from McCartin’s brother Connor, Orange quarterback Quintin Hunter and Gough’s teammate at Liberty, Corey Lillard.

But at that point the Virginia Tech coaching staff hadn’t paid a lot of attention to our area. Hunter and Fells-Danzer were recruited by just about everybody, including the Hokies.  But despite traditionally having a roster full of players from inside the state, Tech hadn’t made a habit of offering scholarships to players from this area.

Maybe that trend is changing a little. Gough plans on being Hokie and the Virginia Tech coaching staff has started paying a lot more attention to Eastern View’s Stevie Strother recently.

At least a couple of seniors from Culpeper could see themselves playing Division I football next year. John Ross Hawkins, the offensive lineman from Culpeper County High School visited William & Mary last week and his father told Star-Exponent sports writer Ron Counts that the visit went well.

Speaking of going well, everything was going that way for Eastern View running back Stevie Strother on Friday. EVHS coach Greg Hatfield talked to a member of the Maryland coaching staff on Wednesday, two days before he rushed for 314 yards against Madison. There may have also been a member of the Virigina Tech coaching staff on hand for that performance. Hatfield said the Hokies were talking about coming to the game, but after the win he wasn’t sure if a VT assistant had made it or not. Either way the Hokies are interested in seeing more of Strother.

****Madison may have lost Friday and saw their perfect record slip away, but the Mountaineers still have a great shot at winning the Bull Run District and moving on to the Division 2 playoffs. MCHS plays Clarke County this weekend and the winner of that game will be the favorite to win the district, so Stuart Dean’s team can’t afford to dwell on the EVHS loss for long.

— SHANE METTLEN (10/11/2008)

Peter Lalich’s dismissal from the team at U.Va. and the general turmoil of the Cavaliers pro-gram might have an interesting effect on some area players. Orange quarterback Quintin Hunter, a Virginia commit, has said more than once that he would like to continue playing quarterback in college.

Recruiting services list the 6-2, 180-pound Hunter as an “athlete” meaning he has the skills and physical ability to play in several different spots, but “athlete” is often code for “high school quarterback who won’t play quarterback in college.” However, Lalich’s troubles have left the Cavs anything but deep at the quarterback position and if there is a coaching change in Charlottesville before next year the new staff might want to make some changes. Shifting to the trendy spread offense — which Hunter runs at Orange — and going to a mobile, dual-threat QB might just be among those changes.

Virginia is left with Marc Verica and Scott Deke as the top two signal callers for this season. Deke is a senior and won’t be back and Verica couldn’t beat out Lalich for the starting job to start the season, even though Lalich hardly looked like an All-ACC pick in the first two games.

True freshman Riko Smalls, a two-star recruit out of Texas, is the only other scholarship quar-terback on the roster. U.Va. also has Fauquier’s Kyle McCartin, a walk-on freshman, and redshirt freshmen Warner Blunt and Brendan Lane. If Deke and Verica struggle or injuries pile up, is it that far fetched to think that McCartin could be called into action or at least see his name on the depth chart?

As for next year, Verica will likely be the incumbent starter and it’s always possible last year’s starter, Jameel Sewell could return if his academic situation is straightened out. But it’s also very possible that either Hunter or another incoming QB, Stephens City product Ross Metheny, could enter camp as the most talented and promising quarterback on the roster.

— SHANE METTLEN (9/19/2008)

New VHSL Power Points rankings are out. Power Points help determine which teams make the playoffs and a few area teams are in solid shape so far this season.

Madison County (2-0) ranks No. 4 in Division 2 with 19.000 points, just 0.333 behind No. 3 Floyd County. Eastern View (1-1) is No. 18 in Division 3 with 15.500 points and in Division 5 Liberty and Fauquier both cracked the top 20. Liberty (2-0) is No. 17 with 23.000 and Fauquier (2-0) is No. 19 with 22.000 points.

—SHANE METTLEN (9/15/08)

Last week I watched Quintin Hunter do just about anything he wanted to do against the Culpeper defense and thought to myself that the Orange quarterback was the most electrifying high school player I had seen since Vic Hall quarterbacked Gretna to back-to-back state titles and broke just about every offensive record in the VHSL books.

The next day I watched Hall play as a very average cornerback for the University of Virginia. His interception return for a touchdown against Richmond just served as a reminder that it’s a shame he doesn’t get his hands on the ball more.  U.Va. does use Hall as a punt returner, but his extraordinary field vision is minimized when he spends so much time looking up in the air, waiting for the punt to come down.

Let’s hope Hunter doesn’t get treated the same way when he arrives at U.Va. next year. Hunter has said publically he wants to play quarterback in college. Virginia coach Al Groh has made it clear he prefers a traditional, pro-style quarterback to the mobile dual threats.

It doesn’t seem to matter that in a state that produced Ronald Curry, both the Vick brothers, Brian Randall, Allen Iverson and others, Hall was the most prolific high school quarterback in Virginia history.

And it doesn’t seem to matter that Marques Hagans and Jameel Sewell led the Cavs to some of their best seasons under Groh. The coach simply wants to find the next Matt Schaub to play quarterback for the Wahoos.  Groh’s preference for a drop-back passer probably isn’t going to change, but here’s hoping that the coaching staff treats Hunter more like Hagans than Hall. When Hagans couldn’t crack the lineup at quarterback he played wide receiver. Groh new he needed to get the ball in his playmakers’ hands.

That’s something he seems to have forgotten as he Virginia offense has struggled the past two seasons and Hall, potentially his best playmaker, plays defense.

—SHANE METTLEN (9/11/08)

There was a lot of response to the entry about recruiting among the area high schools, which prompted me to follow up. I didn’t mean to imply in the first entry that coaches from Eastern View hadn’t contacted players in the offseason about playing for them, but from everything I’ve been told, the EVHS coaches only called players that were living in their district.

Now there’s plenty of rumors about Cyclones moving into the district or living with relatives so they could go to Eastern View. I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t. What I do know is that when the decision was made to play varsity athletics at the new school it was going to be nearly impossible to start a program without upsetting some people.

I said it last winter and I’ll say it again: the smart thing to do would have been to follow Battlefield High School’s lead and not play varsity sports at EVHS the first year. The Bobcats didn’t have a senior class when they started up and it probably would have worked better to do the same in Culpeper. Kettle Run, the new school in Fauquier County, doesn’t have a senior class, but it made the mistake of playing a varsity schedule and has been beaten 133-6 in its first two games.

Of course the decision was made a long time ago here in Culpeper and now there are hard feelings on both sides, which is unfortunate.

— SHANE METTLEN (9/8/08)

Madison County football fans can relive Friday night’s game against William Monroe on Saturday morning. ESPN 840 AM out of Charlottesville will air the game tape delayed at 11 a.m. Orange fans looking to keep tabs on rival Monticello can hear the Mustangs game at Albemarle Friday night on Big Country 105.3 Friday night. That game will be re-aired at 7 a.m. Saturday.

****We’ve gotten a lot of calls lately about why we haven’t covered certain teams or certain games, particularly JV contests. A new high school in the county means twice as many varsity teams in Culpeper to cover and not enough man power at the Star-Exponent to get to all of the varsity games, let alone the junior varsity. In a lot of cases we rely on coaches to call us and give us the results.

So if you are reading this and want to read about someone on the JV squad encourage the coaches to call us with the results.

— SHANE METTLEN (9/4/08)

****There’s been a lot of whispers the past couple of weeks about local football teams and whether or not the players that make up the Eastern View squad are attending the school they are sup-posed to. Interestingly enough the whispers seemed to get louder with each touchdown the Cy-clones scored in the scrimmage against Culpeper.

I asked EVHS coach Greg Hatfield about the subtle accusations of recruiting and he said all his players were going to school in the district where they live. I tend to believe him considering that Floyd T. Binns is supposed to be the main feeder middle school for Eastern View and if you go to Binns and look at the plaques hanging for their undefeated football teams a few years ago, the names up there pretty much match the Cyclones starting lineup.

An inquiry with the Virginia High School League about whether or not they were looking into recruiting in the Culpeper area was unanswered as of Wednesday afternoon.

On the subject of what players are at what school, it’s interesting how it seems like it was all or nothing when it came to the school split. EVHS picked up most of the experienced football players and the lion’s share of the returning field hockey talent. Culpeper has basically the entire volleyball team from last year back and kept all but one of the top runners on the boys cross coun-try team.

— SHANE METTLEN (9/3/08)