By Thomas Grant Jr.
A shutout road win over a district rival would often prompt satisfactory emotions from the winning team.
Instead, it was a less than celebratory mood around Westwood following the 31-0 victory over fellow Richland School District member Spring Valley.
This was especially true following head coach Stephen Burris’ post-game speech. Imploring his players to “grow up” and pay better “attention to detail”, he was less enthusiastic about the overall effort than the win.
“I think the takeaway tonight is just grow up,” he said. “Focus a lot on the things we need to do. On a personal level, just mature and not responding when you’ve been wronged or mistreated, whatever the case is during the course of a game or just life in general. We’ve just got to grow up as a program.
“It’s an individual challenge with everybody in the program. Coaches, players, managers, trainers, everybody. We have to mature as a unit and as we do that, we’ll start to see some of our potential. Tonight, we responded in some situations where I wish he hadn’t. We were sluggish coming out. Make any excuse you want to, you have to play football. We didn’t do a good job of that earlier.”
Both teams struggled offensively in a scoreless first quarter. In the case of the Vikings, it saw their streaks of consecutive scoreless games extend to four, scoreless quarters to 18 and quarters without a touchdown to 21.
Spring Valley’s defense did find success pressuring quarterback Carrington Carter. Defensive lineman Ethan Clarke and safety Dylan Redden teamed up for a couple of sacks and defensive back Marcel Goodwin made a touchdown-saving pass deflection in the end zone in the second quarter.
This forced Westwood to settle for a 23-yard field goal by Muhsin Yakubu to break less a scoreless tie.
Just before halftime, the Redhawks recovered a fumble. Duke commit Jayden Boyd then provided a momentous boost.
He took the shovel pass from Carter and made his way through the Viking defense for a 44-yard touchdown as time expired in the half.
Boyd’s presence was especially valuable with running back Angelo Rios out with an injury.
“Anything you get a kid that can do the things that he can with the ball in his hands, you’ve got to find ways to get him the ball,” Burris said.
Boyd opened the second half in similar fashion. This time, he returned the opening kickoff 43 yards into Spring Valley territory.
A person foul penalty called after Boyd was hit out of bounds moved the football to the 29-yard line. This led to the first of two touchdown runs by Quentin McGill Jr. to make it 17-0 one minute into the second half.
Boyd added another touchdown courtesy of a 12-yard pass from Carter. Westwood’s defense preserved the shutout in shutting down the Vikings’ passing game.
Westwood (5-2, 2-1) heads on the road to face Lugoff-Elgin.
Blazers win 4th straight
Ridge View remains in the running for the Region 5-5A title with their fourth straight victory.
The 26-0 win for the team’s second straight shutout. It was accomplished against a Demons’ team that entered the game averaging30 points a game.
A week after rushing for 201 yards, Spencer Bobian scored three touchdowns. Adam Keefe also had a scoring run for the Blazers (5-2, 3-0).
