Woodberry Forest coach Clint Alexander had visions of 2009 in his head after the first half of the first quarter. Landon’s visit that year accounted for the Tigers’ lone loss, albeit in overtime, but in the first six minutes of play on Friday a fumble recovery and a field goal by the Bears had Woodberry looking at an uphill battle. It was a small hill as it turned out, a bump in the road really, as the Tigers uncorked 45 answered points as its offense finally found the explosion in both the passing and running game it had been working on for the first half the season. Eight minutes was all it took for Woodberry to snatch the lead once it went up, the margin only got wider after one big after another to pace the way for a 45-17 win.
“We have great senior leadership and that’s what this was about, but personally, I was thinking about when we had (Stanford’s) Ed Reynolds and lost in heart breaking fashion to this team,” Alexander said. “It almost started the same way starting down. But the guys didn’t blink. Nobody panicked.”
Of course, the side story for the Tigers coming in for the second week in a row was its rotation at quarterback with senior Hunter Etheridge still sidelined with an injury. And while freshman Lindell Stone and junior Christian Zaytoun played well last week in a huge road win against Collegiate, the duo was truly on point at home against Landon. Lindell came out of the gate with a beautiful pass and even better catch by Christian Asher, but the play was negated shortly there after on a fumble that went the other way for 82-yards to the house. The Bears tacked on a field goal on their next possession but the Tigers hardly flinched.
“I think all the credit goes to the offensive line because they protected so well,” Stone said. “I thought we were really disciplined after (the first part of the first quarter) and that we didn’t have many mental mistakes. Really, teams having been stopping us so much as we’ve been stopping ourselves. We did a good job of preventing that in the second quarter.”
After getting on the board with a 31-yard field goal from Michael Armstrong, Stone tied the game up on the next possession with a 13-yard run to end the first quarter. The very next possession, Stone found Nate Ingram on a pass and the receiver worked his way though his blockers for an 84-yard touchdown to make it 17-10 for the Tigers with 10 minutes until the break.
“It was great to spread the field, even in this weather,” Stone said. “Our receivers catch well, they protect well and then we just got some huge plays out of the running game.”
Woodberry simply continued to roll from that point on. Zaytoun came in on the next possession and hit Greer Martini on a short pass and the Notre Dame commit turned it into a 37-yard touchdown. For good measure after a Logi Portugal interception, the Tigers fired up the run game in the last minute before the break and with time expired, HT Minor ran into the endzone from 50 yards out to inflate the lead to 31-10.
Halftime didn’t break up the momentum. Stone picked up his second rushing touchdown of the game early in the third quarter on a 7-yard keeper. James Hewell answered with a 41-yard touchdown run just four minutes later and suddenly the game was on running clock and out of reach.
“One of our goals is to spread the ball around to whoever is open,” Alexander said. “I have to give some credit to the parents who have not complained once about playing time.”
The Bears scored late in the fourth on a tipped pass, but there was no coming back from this one. In a classy move, Landon took a knee to run out the clock themselves after they were pinned at their own one and half yard line after a Trent Coleman punt.
On the day, Stone was 8 for 11 passing with 176 yards while Zaytoun was 5 for 8 with 104. Ingram’s lone catch led the Tigers receiving corps with 84 yards while Martini had two catches for 54 yards, Zach Roderick added three for 53 and Asher had a pair for 51. On the ground Hewell, Minor and Stone were efficient with respective totals of 8 carries for 77 yards, 10 for 70 and 4 for 31.
Woodberry (4-1) gets next week off before hitting the ground again for a huge meeting with St. Christopher’s on October 25th.
“We’ve never had a bye week so it’s going to be nice,” Alexander said. “We’ve started to introduce the gameplan already because they’ve got some special players. But more importantly, this is a great time for our guys to get out and look at their colleges so we’re going to encourage them to do that.”
