The Salem football team will try to avoid a third straight loss when they play a third straight tough opponent this Friday night.
Blacksburg will be here for a 7 pm game at Salem Stadium. The Spartans and Bruins had two wars last year. Blacksburg won the regular season game, thrashing the Spartans 49-12. They met again in the playoffs, also in Blacksburg, but this time Salem scored late and held on for a 33-32 win in what many folks felt was the real state championship game.
Salem won the next two games by a combined 58 points to win a third straight state championship in Class 4. Blacksburg lost speedy running back Cole Beck from last year’s team, as he’s now on scholarship at Virginia Tech. However, they return UVA signee Tiquest Terry, talented quarterback Grant Johnston and a big line. Some feel this year’s Bruin team is even better than last year’s team that went 11-2.
“They still have great team speed and they have more experience this year,” said Salem coach Stephen Magenbauer. “They have more seniors this year. They’re a state caliber team.” Salem could be without senior quarterback Jack Gladden, who sprained his ankle two weeks ago at Dinwiddie. He was questionable as of press deadlines Tuesday night. At that point, he wasn’t healed enough to start.
“We’ll dress him,” said Magenbauer. “We’ll see how he comes along Thursday and even Friday before we make a final decision.” If Gladden can’t go sophomore Hunter Chaney would get his second straight start. Chaney has been thrown right into the fire. He came in when Gladden was injured against a Dinwiddie team that hadn’t lost a regular season game in two years. Then, last week, he got his first start against a Northside team that was undefeated and breathing fire to beat Salem. And they did, 35-27 last Thursday in a game moved up a day to avoid weather from Hurricane Florence.
“I thought Hunter played pretty well but we made some mistakes we had to overcome,” he said. “I was proud of how Hunter stepped up.” The Spartans never led in this game. They fell behind early, 7-0, but tied it up on a 66 yard TD pass from Chaney to Shawn Collins early in the second quarter. Northside scored the next two touchdowns, but after the second Isaiah Persinger ran the kickoff back 93 yards for a touchdown with just over 20 seconds left in the half. That gave the Spartans momentum going into the half despite trailing 21-13.
The Vikings killed any momentum Salem had when they hit for two passing touchdowns to open a 35-13 lead, including one to Christian Fisher early in the fourth quarter that covered 94 yards. But the Spartans didn’t quit. They came right back down the field with Chaney hitting Collins on a long pass that Shawn made a spectacular catch on inside the five, with Chandler Sutphin doing the honors. Salem then cut the lead to eight when Chaney hit Avery Close with an eight yard TD pass with just under two minutes on the clock, but the Spartans never could get the ball back to try and tie things up. Chaney finished a respectable seven for 14 passing for 154 yards and two TDs. Collins had four catches for 129 yards, Close had two for 16 and Torrin Pellant had one reception for nine yards. Isaiah Persinger had 130 yards rushing on 20 attempts but no one else had more than seven, as four other rushers combined for just 17 yards on 11 carries.
On defense Anthony Haupt had 10 tackles, including a sack and one for a loss. Collins and Bobby Pinello had nine tackles each while Jorden McDonald and Sutphin had seven each. With the loss Salem is now 2-2 and the Spartans haven’t lost three games in a season since 2013, and have never lost three in a row under Magenbauer. They’ll have to play well this week to avoid that distinction against a Blacksburg team that comes in 4-0 and has outscored four opponents 180-66. “Our goal is to play up to our potential every week,” said Magenbauer. “We gave up too many big plays on defense last week and we can’t afford to do that against Blacksburg.”