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Buckwalter's Debut Spoiled by Washington-Lee

By Matt Brooks (Contact)

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

First-year Dominion football coach Karl Buckwalter showed up to practice Aug. 11 – the day after his wedding – eager to spend his honeymoon rebuilding the Titans football program.

By midway through the Titans’ season opener against Washington-Lee on Monday night in Sterling, that honeymoon felt like a distant memory.

Propelled by a lethal rushing attack and an opportunistic defense, the Generals pounded their hosts and avenged last season’s week one loss with a 41-7 rout.

The game started slowly with both teams failing to get on the board in the first quarter, but following a Dominion punt, the Generals took over at their 31-yard line with 8:32 remaining in the second quarter. On the first play from scrimmage senior running back Charles Fuller bounced an inside run to the outside and outran everyone on the field for a 69-yard touchdown to start the scoring.

On the ensuing kickoff, the Generals went for the squib kick and recovered the ball after it smacked off an unassuming Dominion special teams player. From there, senior quarterback Jake Del Gallo found junior Karl Lendenmann in the back right corner of the end zone for a 15-yard touchdown pass and the Generals had put up 13 points in as many seconds.

"You've got to give W-L a lot of credit, they came out, they played hard, they came after us and they did exactly what they had to do," Buckwalter said. "It wasn't rocket science what they were doing, they were just blocking and tackling and they tossed and they did some leads and they did some basic football and when we needed stops we just didn't get them. But you've got to give them credit. They came out and they took it to us."

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Dominion Loses to Washington-Lee

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Dominion senior quarterback Chris Taylor looks to fire downfield in the first half of Monday's game against Washington-Lee. (Matt Brooks)

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Dominion sophomore running back Deandre Reaves returns a kickoff during the Titans' season opener against Washington-Lee on Monday. Reaves finished with 132 yards and one touchdown as Dominion fell to the Generals, 41-7. (Matt Brooks)

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Dominion sophomore running back Deandre Reaves grabs a drink after his 45-yard touchdown run against Washington-Lee on Monday night. (Matt Brooks)

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An injured Chris Taylor is helped off the field late in the third quarter after taking a hard hit in the backfield. Taylor did not return but Dominion Coach Karl Buckwalter said the senior could have come back if necessary. (Matt Brooks)

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First-year Dominion coach Karl Buckwalter looks on as his Titans fall to the Washington-Lee Generals in their season opener, 41-7. (Matt Brooks)

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The scoring didn't stop there as Washington-Lee (1-0) scored twice more in the final two minutes of the first half. The first touchdown came on another Fuller run – this one from 11 yards out – and 10 seconds later the Generals were celebrating in the end zone yet again following junior linebacker Rock Battle's 35-yard interception return for a TD.

"That's huge for momentum," Battle said. "Defense leads to offense and the momentum we gave to the offense was big with those spectacular plays. We fed off it and we kept it going. We weren't going to let up."

Any hope of regrouping at halftime was quickly shattered when Fuller ran 76 yards for his third touchdown on the first offensive play of the third quarter.

Dominion responded with a five-minute drive culminated by a 45-yard Deandre Reaves signature touchdown run during which he travelled at least twice that distance, cutting back repeatedly and avoiding eight tacklers on his way into the end zone.

The Titans (0-1) forced a Washington-Lee punt on the ensuing possession and looked poised for a comeback after Reaves's 46-yard run gave them a first down on the Generals' 19-yard line. But sophomore running back Trey Baxter fumbled in the backfield and Fuller scooped the ball up and bolted 85 yards for his fourth touchdown of the game.

"It's about focus and intensity," Fuller said. "Wanting to score, wanting to put the ball in the end zone and putting points on the board. It's teamwork and all that put together and big plays are going to happen."

Fuller finished with 197 yards rushing and three touchdowns on only 10 carries, adding the fumble return to his highlight reel. Senior running back Keith Johnson added 103 yards on nine carries as the Generals totaled 314 rushing yards against the team that held them to 51 yards total in last year's 27-7 season opening defeat.

"The good thing is, as I told the kids, we got it out of our system ... I hope," Buckwalter said.

Reaves led the Titans with 132 yards on the ground but wasn’t used much in the fourth quarter once the game was out of reach. Dominion senior quarterback Chris Taylor missed all of the fourth quarter after getting shaken up by a late hit just before the end of the third quarter. He finished with 57 yards on 8-of-15 passing and was replaced by senior Andy Pont, although Buckwalter said Taylor could have returned if needed.

"He's always going to be a threat, but what I didn't want to do when it's 41-7, was run him," Buckwalter said of Reaves. "We have a bunch of other games left, we've got to get the other kids some carries, and it's a cohesiveness. We can't depend on one kid and that's what I'm going to work towards us not doing – depending on one person alone."

The Generals, who play in the AAA National, were the aggressors all night and appear to have newfound enthusiasm and intensity under second-year coach Josh Shapiro. Last season they narrowly missed a playoff berth with a 4-6 mark and now their sights are set on making 2008 the school's first winning season since 1993. They host Northern Region power Chantilly in their home opener on Friday.

"This game came back and haunted us last year," Shapiro said of the victory. "This was the one that kept us out, and we didn't take care of business in the last week of the season. So the main thing this year was just to right a wrong here and try to finish this game and see if this program has developed and matured in the last year."

Meanwhile the Titans have a week to regroup before travelling to Millbrook – 27-13 losers to Briar Woods on Friday – in two weeks.

"I'm never going to lower my expectations," Buckwalter said. "We've got a lot of work to do, which we knew. We can't rest on our preseason. We've got to buckle down and we've got to get after it. The good thing is that we've got a bye week coming up and we've got a lot of things to work on and we'll go right at it."

Tagged: Dominion High School, football, high school sports

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