GW back to its winning ways

It didn’t take long for George Washington’s losing streak to end and stop the talk about the team reeling after playing three of the top teams in the state of Virginia and North Carolina.

GW’s 31-0 rout of Patrick Henry in the Eagles’ Western Valley District opener looked like a win from a year ago — on the back of a solid rushing attack that carried the offensive load in GW’s run to the Northwest Region championship game.

“I thought our kids came out with the right kind of focus and attitude,” GW coach Dan Newell said. “They’ve been discredited, they’ve been disrespected by a lot of people for what’s happened over the last three weeks, despite the fact I thought they battled as hard as they could. We were injured, we had a lot of other things we could have used as excuses, but we kept our mouths shut and kept banging in there and we told the kids, ‘You’re going come to out of this thing one of two ways … either polished up or worn down.’ I think tonight, we rose to the level of our competition. We didn’t finish the job the last three weeks, but this time I felt pretty good about how the kids responded to the adversity that they’ve been facing and took it out here on the field and proved to everybody else that what you’ve been seeing the past three weeks is not what we had inside us.”

What Patrick Henry saw was a GW running attack churn out 430 yards on 45 carries (9.6 yards per attempt) and a defense pitch a shutout for the first time since 2005. In a way, the Eagles played like their previous three opponents and completely dominated a lesser team.

“We were much more physical tonight than we’ve been over the last three weeks,” Newell said. “I think our kids were kind of ready to take out some frustrations.”

The competition the Eagles faced the previous three weeks hold a combined record of 19-0. West Forsyth (7-0) is ranked sixth in the Associated Press North Carolina Group 4A state poll, Battlefield (6-0) is the No. 3-ranked team in the Virginia Group AAA state poll and Amherst County (6-0) is the top-ranked team in Group AA.

After being held to less than 175 rushing yards in each of the previous three games, the Eagles’ running attack accounted for all but two yards of the team’s offense. DeVaughn Benion rushed for 198 yards on a meager 11 carries and Terrance Jackson added 79 yards on 13 attempts. Not bad for a one-two punch.

“We felt like we got a lot of speed at the running back position. (Jackson), coach Martin refers to him as our anchor,” Newell said. “You’ve got to have that pound-the-rock kind of guy up the middle. You can’t be a finesse team, speed team all the time. Not to take anything any from the physicality of the other running backs, there’s an attitude about him when he carries the ball that you don’t have to block it perfectly for him to get five, six, seven yards — might break through for 10 or 12.”