It says something about what Louisa County expects of itself that there was little joy in the team huddle on the field after a 35-20 over a gutty, tenacious Fluvanna County squad.
“We have so much potential in us and right now we haven’t hit near that level,” said Louisa quarterback Zack Jackson. “We have a lot to work on, we haven’t touched how we can play yet.”
Part of that was Fluvanna’s doing.
“Up the gut, they just gutted us out,” Jackson said. “Everything just fell apart right there.”
Fluvanna running back Logan Walls gashed the Lions for 180 yards and three touchdowns as the Flucos leaned on a between-the-tackles, downhill running game largely out of the I-formation.
Lucky for the Lions, their own running back was putting on a similar, even more productive act on the other side of the ball. Andre Mealy averaged nearly 11 yards per carry en route to a 229-yard, three-touchdown outing on just 21 carries. Mealy broke tackle after tackle on hard runs up the middle.
“Coach will hand him the ball and things don’t go right at first and then he gets the ball and he’s just trucking people, stiff-arming people and getting more yards,” Jackson said. “That just gets everyone pumped up and gets the offense rolling.”
Mealy’s 90-yard touchdown run midway through the first half kick-started a Louisa surge that eventually handed the Lions a 28-13 lead at halftime. After a touchback and a penalty that was half the distance to the goaline pinned Louisa on their own 10-yardline, the Lions went to a staple of their single wing playbook, a direct snap to Mealy. The senior rumbled to the right, got a block on the edge and took off down the Louisa sideline.
An interception by Cauri Myers on a ball that was tipped at the line set up a 27-yard Mealy sprint for a score and Fluvanna had to punt on the next drive. The disastorous stretch for the Flucos ended when Mealy plunged in from four yards out with 25 seconds left in the half. Zack Jackson’s 42-yard toss to Peanut Johnson down the sideline keyed that final drive of the half for Louisa.
“We have to finish quarters and halves,” said Fluvanna coach Jason Barnett. “That’s a big thing for us.”
The real backbreaker came after the break though when after each team had a failed possession, the Flucos made a fantastic special teams play, pinning the Lions on the two on a punt. The Lions immediately went to work and marched 98 yards on a grueling 14-play drive that burned 6:33 off the clock and wore out a Fluvanna defense populated by several two-way players. The grinding drive put Louisa, largely, in the driver’s seat after Lorenzo Henson scampered in from 12 yards out.
Still, Fluvanna refused to go away. Walls, a former Louisa resident who is a rock solid wrestler, broke off a 17-yard run with 2:06 to play in the contest.
The Flucos’ shift to the I-formation that they’d employed earlier in the season just a week after running a lot of single-wing style football against Charlottesville certainly had an impact on Louisa’s defensive execution.
“We spent the entire week going against nothing but single wing and they went back to what they started with, the I,” Meeks said. “That was a nice curveball, I thought that was a smart move. Barnett did a good job, it shouldn’t have caught us off-guard as much as it did because we see a lot of I, but I think it did.”
But a rash of penalties — 13 called, nine accepted for a total of 85 yards in infractions — also slowed down the Lions. Louisa also struggled to generate the havoc they usually create in the backfield, totaling just two tackles for a loss and no sacks against what proved to be a stingy Fluvanna offensive line. Lamond Price’s 10 total tackles led Louisa.
For Fluvanna, the loss was difficult to swallow for a number of reasons.
“We played as physical as we possibly could with them and it just didn’t work out,” Barnett said. “And I’m heartbroken for them. Football has a lot of life lessons in it. We always try and find the lessons that we can teach and this is one of them. You can do everything that you possibly can and it still doesn’t work out. And we still have to come out and do the exact same thing next week.”
The Lions now get a week off to reset and prepare for a battle with a Powhatan squad that leveled Western Albemarle 42-7.
