Once they got the football the Glenvar offense couldn’t be stopped last Friday. The Highlanders scored 44 points in the three quarters they played offense and beat visiting Carroll County, 44-19, at Highlander Stadium.
Things didn’t start out well for the undefeated Highlanders. The Cavaliers scored on their first possession, then recovered an onside kick. They scored again, onside kicked again, and recovered it again. Glenvar stopped them this time, but it was now a minute and 10 seconds into the second quarter and Glenvar trailed 12-0 and still hadn’t run an offensive play.
“Give them credit, it was a great job on their part,” said Glenvar coach Kevin Clifford. “We knew going in what they wanted to do, snap the ball with seconds left on the play clock and slow the game down. It didn’t hurt our kids to face a little adversity.”
Once the Highlanders were able to run some plays they couldn’t be stopped. Glenvar ran just 21 plays in the game and scored six touchdowns. Carroll ran 61 total plays but didn’t score again until the fourth quarter when Glenvar was leading 37-12.
Quarterback Brody Dawyot had another big game with five touchdown passes while completing 12 of 16 attempts. He found Cooper Mullins seven times for 242 yards and three scores and his brother, Tre Dawyot, for three catches of which two went for touchdowns. Brody also ran three times for 49 yards and a score and he has now accounted for 121 touchdowns in his four years as Glenvar’s quarterback, shattering all school passing records in the process.
Defensively, Dalton Shoemaker and Nick Wilson had 19 tackles each and Wilson had five tackles for losses. Cale Vaughan had 16 tackles and Hanks had 13.
Now 6-0, the Highlanders will head to James River this Friday for the annual Virginia Media Rocking Chair game. Virginia Media includes the Fincastle Herald and Salem Times-Register newspapers, covering both participants, and it’s been an annual right 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.
The two teams became district rivals again when River 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 21-7 in the 28 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 28 years painted on the chair. It’s painted red, black, green and gold to represent both schools.
“I know a little bit about the story of the rocking chair but I haven’t heard much talk about it,” said first year River coach Jack Baker. “I wasn’t sure if it was still a thing.”
It is, and Clifford plans to keep the chair in the Highlands. However, this year the Knights are off to their best start in a few years at 4-2 under first year coach Baker.
“We’ll have to play well,” said Clifford. “Coach Baker and his staff are doing a great job with their program.”
