October 17, 2009
I went to Alexandria, Virginia to see 6-6 295 11th-grade lineman Jay Whitmire of T.C. Williams High School play on Saturday against visiting W. T. Woodson High of Fairfax, VA. You can read more about Jay Whitmire on the internet. You’ll see how highly-touted he is among the nation’s top college prospects!
I left Charlottesville, Virginia at 3:17 A.M. on Saturday morning. By 3:45 A.M. I was in Zion’s X-Roads, Virginia, on the way east towards Richmond, Virginia. At 4:26 A.M. I was listening to radio station “FM 105.5,” and “The Cars” were singing the lyrics: “I guess you’re just what I needed!” At 4:39 I entered Route 95-North, which would take me northward toward Washington, D.C.! At top left you can see the photo I took (while driving near the back of a moving tractor trailer!) at 5:32 A.M. near Fredericksburg, Virginia, which is about 40 miles south of Washington, D.C. At 6:17 A.M. on Saturday, I got to Alexandria, Virginia!
I had noticed on mapquest.com that T.C. Williams High School was just 3 miles from the “International House of Pancakes”. You probably remember T.C. Williams High School from the movie: “Remember The Titans”! You’ll see eight photos (he’s wearing number 77 in the blue jersey) on this page of the player I came to see play: heavily-recruited Class of 2011 two-way lineman Jay Whitmire of T.C. Williams High. So I knew I’d have no problem in getting from the restaurant to the football game in time! I reached the “International House of Pancakes” at 7:38 A.M. I was to meet a woman there at 8 A.M. The University of Virginia was playing the University of Maryland later on in the day at 4 P.M., and my plan was to listen to the game on my way back to Charlottesville after I saw the T.C. Williams-W.T. Woodson football game. I met the woman and by 8:55 A.M. we were done eating breakfast. Or was it lunch I had? Not many people order salad as their breakfast! I would be eating garbage all day and didn’t need to start off with 10,000 calories of pancakes for breakfast! Hahaha.
At 11:14 of the first quarter, T.C. Williams blazed 61 yards for a touchdown, and T.C. Williams led 6-0. It looked to be the beginning of a rout! But that would prove to be the ONLY thing T.C. Williams would do that afternoon! With 10:27 in the second quarter, W.T. Woodson scored on a 10-yard run by James Johnson, a 5-10 190 senior who is at least a Division 1-AA (Football Championship Subdivision) prospect. That tied the game at 6-6. The game-long rain made playing football extremely difficult! With four seconds remaining in the first half, W.T. Woodson’s QB fumbled the ball, but a running back recovered. Woodson elected to run a running play that went no where and that was the end of the first half! I didn’t take many notes for this game: writing things down in a pouring rain is not easy, and even worse, preserving them was next-to-impossible. All I could do was put each entry on a different page and hope that the ink wouldn’t run! My final stats I had to get from “The Washington Post’s” online site. It was raining hard, and I stayed on the same side of the stadium for the entire game, so I didn’t get that close to a lot of the action.
It was the first time I had seen 6-4 Temple-bound W.T. Woodson High quarterback Connor Reilly play. He came in to the game as the leading passer in total yards passing in the entire Washington Metro-area, having completed 98-187 passes for 10 touchdowns and 7 interceptions for 1,402 yards for a 5-1 team. I didn’t watch #17, Connor Reilly, from W.T. Woodson, very closely, because he’s a senior, and I don’t scout seniors or players who have already committed to colleges. My impression was that either because of the weather or their style of play, they didn’t throw the ball deep much. So I couldn’t tell much about Connor Reilly. But he appeared to be the same size as advertised. He also did all of their punting, and each team punted the ball a lot! Over the loudspeaker, the announcer said that in the first half, W.T. Woodson fumbled the ball 5 times and lost 3 of them. It’s hard to evaluate skill position players in weather like this, although with artificial turf, at least there was no mud involved!
6-4 225 Class of 2011 defensive lineman Joe Massaquoi, number 73 in blue for T.C. Williams High, has some college potential. According to “The Washington Post,” Connor Reilly’s passing statistics were 9-20 for 58 yards! His low passing yardage was strictly due to the constant rain. My feeling is that like 99% of high school quarterbacks, he does not have what you would call the arm strength of a “blue-chipper,” but he is very polished! He has a lot of college potential. After all, his team is now 6-1: they won this game 20-6. If there was a star in this turnover-fest, it was 5-8 185 sophomore Jonathan Stokes of W. T. Woodson, but it’s too early to determine his college potential in my opinion.
The game ended at 3:40 P.M. on Saturday. The fans quickly made it to their cars to escape the 41 degree weather. By 4:00 P.M., I was back on Route 95-South, and headed toward Richmond, Virginia. I started listening to the University of Virginia-versus-University of Maryland Atlantic Coast Conference football game that started at 4 P.M. By the halftime of the UVa-MD game, it was 5:57 P.M. By 6:08 P.M., I was in Richmond, Virginia! The University of Virginia evened their record at 3-3 by winning their third straight game: they defeated Maryland 20-9. It gave me something interesting to listen to on the ride back home. I was able to listen to the same game on the University of Virginia radio network or on the University of Maryland radio network.
