#9 is running back D.J. Reid of Thomas Dale High.

There had been a big accident on Route 64 East, and there were even orange signs on both sides of the road that said “Accident Ahead”! Then, I passed a sign that showed that the left lane was coming to an end, due to road construction, and that cars had to all get in to the right lane. As a result, I didn’t get to Hopewell, where the Thomas Dale High Knights were playing  the Hopewell High Blue Devils, until around 6 minutes of the first quarter had passed.

In addition to Reid, a second member of the Class of 2013 I came to see was 6-5 300 offensive tackle Zachary Rhodes of Thomas Dale High. Zachary Rhodes wears jersey number 77. According to his coach, North Carolina State and Maryland have shown the most interest in him.

D.J. Reid rushed for 107 yards on 18 for the Thomas Dale Knights, and already has scholarship offers from Virginia and Virginia Tech.

D.J. Reid already looks like a college player. Hopewell has a strange-looking football stadium, which is surrounded by a cement wall on all sides.  Zachary Rhodes looks athletic-enough that I expect him to play in the ACC.

Thankfully, there was no traffic congestion on the way home from Hopewell High to Charlottesville, Virginia!

#77 is Class of 2013 offensive tackle Zachary Rhodes of Thomas Dale High.

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I left for the 4:07 P.M. state championship game on a COLD Saturday afternoon at 2:10 P.M. By 2:58 I had walked the mile-and-a-half and I had arrived at the University of Virginia’s Scott Stadium. At 4:08 P.M. the game started. Demetrick Jackson ran for 13 yards on his first carry! At 8:41 of the first quarter, Thomas Dale scored from the 2-yard line and led 6-0. Demetrick Jackson is not a large running back, but he has very quick feet, quick reactions, always keeps his head down, and runs straight ahead.

A player who caught my eye in warm-ups was junior linebacker Emmanuel Adetunji, who made the 2009-2010 first-team All-District squad this year. He’s 6-2 205, and is shown wearing jersey number 1 in the photo at left. Another photo of Mike Nebrich (wearing jersey number 12) appears at right, after he’s handed the ball off. Lake Braddock High was held to a three-plays-and-out on their first series, and had to punt. Demetrick Jackson had two yards on his second carry. The first carry ended with the score 6-0, the Thomas Dale Knights ahead. At the 8:53 mark of the second quarter, Demetrick Jackson scored from the 1-yard line and his team led 14-0.

But from the 2-yard line, Mike Nebrich scored at the 1:33 mark of the second quarter, and the lead was down to 14-7, Lake Braddock High trailing. At left is a photo I took from the end zone seats of Scott Stadium: it shows the Lake Braddock High fans. People were still arriving to fill the stands! At the 5:05 mark of the third quarter, Thomas Dale High scored again from the 1-yard line, and now they led 21-7. Thomas Dale High’s lead expanded to 28-7 when they returned an interception 31 yards for a touchdown at the 4:38 point of the third quarter.

But Mike Nebrich threw an 18-yard touchdown pass with just 29 seconds left in the third period, and now Lake Braddock just trailed 28-14. Demetrick Jackson was almost unstoppable in this game, and had 147 yards rushing on 21 carries by the end of the third quarter. The Thomas Dale High Knights offensive line dominated their opponents in the state semi-final and final games that I saw. One player stood out was number 71 (he appears in the photo at left), junior lineman Sam Hartman. Although he’s listed at just 6-2 240, I think he has ACC potential! But Lake Braddock refused to give up, and mounted a furious attempt to pull the game out! Although Thomas Dale seemed to put the game away at the 4:42 mark of the last quarter with a 5-yard touchdown pass, extending their lead to 35-14, the game was far from over.

Mike Nebrich threw a 17-yard touchdown pass at the 3:00 mark of the 4th quarter, and it was 35-21. He never quit competing! Mike Nebrich is shown in the photo at right, running behind his line. In the final minutes, Lake Braddock was still fighting before throwing an incompletion on a 4th down play, and then it was over for the Bruins. Thomas Dale ran the clock out, and their fans went crazy! Demetrick Jackson finished with 168 yards on 30 carries! But Mike Nebrich was held to 206 yards and three interceptions passing, completing 19 out of 38 passes in what was a poor game for him. Still, he had a sensational year!

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Although the weather was horrible (temperature in the 30′s, constant rain mixed with snow and wind) I went to see a high school running back for Chesapeake, Virginia’s Oscar Smith High School. He’s 5-7 180 speedster J. C. Coleman, a tenth-grader who has been nationally-ranked for several years in the 400-meters in track and field. He’s a slippery runner who uses his small size and zip to squeeze through small holes and then just burn past defenders. He appears in the top two photos on the left and the right, wearing number 4 in the white jersey, and also in the second photo from the top on the left side of this page.

I was going to see a state semi-final football game that would prove to be one of the best high school football games I’ve ever seen! It involved two Division 6 teams. In the state of Virginia there are 6 Divisions, and Division 6 is for the high schools with the largest classifications. Oscar Smith High of Chesapeake, VA had won 28 straight games, and was rated by two services as among the nation’s top 7 high school football teams! They were playing the home team, Thomas Dale High of Chester, Virginia. Thomas Dale High’s junior running back, Demetrik Jackson, a 5-11 180 junior who wore jersey number 12, was another possible Division 1-A prospect to watch. Thomas Dale High wasn’t rated anything, actually.

Oscar Smith had one of the nation’s best senior quarterbacks in 6-2 210 Phillip Sims, who has verbally committed to the University of Alabama. He appears wearing jersey number 14 in the photo at right. J. C. Coleman appears again in the photo at left. I’m not sure why Oscar Smith, the number one-ranked team in Virginia, had to play on the road, but here they were, playing over 100 miles from home in a quagmire that figured to make their tremendous passing game difficult to employ. Writing down notes about this game was almost impossible: the rain made everything drenched! Haha. Once I got out of the car, my notes dwindled down to only what I could write and then turn to the inside of my notebook. The stands were just 1/4 full when the 2:30 P.M. game started.

Thomas Dale High took a shocking 6-0 lead at the 10:26 mark of the first quarter on a run by Demetrick Jackson. And then, Oscar Smith fumbled the ball after a short pass on their next posession! Demetrick Jackson scored a second time at the 3:04 mark and the score was 14-0! Demetrick Jackson appears in the photo below left, wearing jersey number 12. I was sitting on the Oscar Smith High side, and there was silence, except for a few fans laughing in shock. But I could sense that they were confident that Oscar Smith would come back and win. And why not? They had won 28 straight! However, this game seemed different to me than other Oscar Smith games of the past few years. For one thing, the quagmire of mud was making it imposslbe for Oscar Smith High’s Phillip Sims to pass the ball. He also did the punting for Oscar Smith High, and is shown punting in the photo below right. I could see that the Thomas Dale offensive line was dominating the Oscar Smith defensive line. Thomas Dale’s offensive lineman were more athletic-looking.

At this point, my notes are soaked with water from the game, and getting even more-difficult to read! At the 2:41 mark of the 3rd period, J. C. Coleman, scored from the 6-yard line, and it was now 14-7, Thomas Dale High. Demetrikus Jackson is at least a Division 1-AA prospect, maybe better. (Division 1-A is now known as the “Football Bowl Subdivision” and is composed of big-time schools such as those in the Big Ten, ACC, Pac 10, etc. It is abbreviated “FBS.” Division 1-AA is the old name for what is now called the “Football Championship Subdivision” and is composed of schools like Richmond, Appalachian State, James Madison and William and Mary. It is abbreviated “FCS.”)

The two schools went in to overtime at 14-14. Oscar Smith pulled ahead 17-14. Demetrick Jackson ran around the end for the winning score and pandimonium broke out. This was as good a high school football game as I’ve ever seen. The mud and the home field advantage might have been the difference, but so what? That’s high school football! Demetrick Jackson finished the game with 23 carries for 179 yards. With one game left in his junior season, he now has 179 carries for 1,189 yards and 8 touchdowns this year! His fellow Division 1-A prospect, sophomore J. C. Coleman, ran for 194 yards on 30 carries. He finishes his spectacular sophomore season with 1,225 yards rushing on 203 carries, good for 16 TD’s! Look for him to at least make 2nd-team All-State as a mere sophomore! Next week I’m going to see Thomas Dale play Lake Braddock High in the Division 6 championship game in Charlottesville, Virginia in Scott Stadium!

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