Football: Stone Bridge Headed to Third State Title Game in Five Years After 23-20 Win Over Massaponax

By Dan Sousa

VivaLoudoun.com Editor

Ashburn (Dec. 6, 2009) - The Stone Bridge High School single wing run game was stuck in the mud in Sunday's AAA Division 5 state semifinal against Massaponax, but the Bulldogs gutted their way to the schools third state title appearance in five years on the strength of two long touchdown passes and a defense that gave up yardage, but forced five turnovers, including three fumble recoveries by junior Spenser Rositano.

"We struggled all day. We were over matched in some situations and we just kept at them," said Stone Bridge coach Mickey Thompson who will match his Bulldogs up with Tidewater area powerhouse Phoebus for the third straight postseason, this time with the state title on the line Saturday at noon at UVa's Scott Stadium.

Stone Bridge (13-1) and Phoebus (14-0) have combined for the last three Division 5 state titles with the Bulldogs winning in 2007. That season, Stone Bridge beat Phoebus at home, 38-24, in the semifinals, but last year the Phantoms returned the favor with a 38-8 state semifinal win at home over SB.

"They've got great athletes. I felt better once I saw the last score. I felt like, OK, maybe we can play with them," said Thompson about a Phoebus team that won two weeks ago in overtime and then need a fourth quarter score to beat Hanover, 10-7, in the semifinals Saturday. "I'm never going to count our guys out and they'll be ready. We will scheme it up and we'll be ready to go. They better be ready to go but they have got a great program, great athletes. I've been in awe of them most of the year, and I see a little chink in their armor, it gives me some hope."

Sunday's game at Stone Bridge was pushed back a day because of Saturday's snowstorm and it almost didn't get played as field conditions were very muddy on the Stone Bridge once-upon-a-time Bermuda turf. While the mud played a part in Massaponax's five fumbles out of their triple option offense, it also help grind the Bulldogs single wing attack to a halt as spinning and cutbacks were almost impossible. Stone Bridge, however, did not turn the ball over.

"We did less of the spin game because I didn't want another hand off in there ... that is why we didn't run much misdirection because I didn't want a second handoff and I was worried about putting the gall on the ground," said Thompson. "It's our game, we are playing on our field ... it is probably a little worse for them. This isn't great for us. We have no trap game and we aren't great drive blockers so on offense it hurt us. It was terrible conditions, I'll admit that."

What Stone Bridge was able to do is pull off two huge pass plays. On the second play of the afternoon, junior quarterback Kyle Rody hit junior Kyle Gouveia, who also plays quarterback for Stone Bridge, with a backward pass behind the line of scrimmage and Gouveia pulled up and threw it down the field to Stan Johnson for a 60-yard score just 54 seconds into the contest.

"We worked on that all week. That was our game plan to start out with that double pass," said Gouveia, who spent most of his time Sunday anchoring the defense at linebacker.

In the second half it was Rody, this time after Massaponax had taken the lead, 20-15, midway through the third quarter, making a fantastic ball fake and then finding Taylor Lambke behind the Panther defense for a 76-yard score. For Rody, Sunday's game was a long way from mid-season when his season was sidetracked by an admitted slow start and then injury which kept him out a month.

"At the beginning of the year I wasn't really playing that well. I should have been playing a lot better than I was. Then I got hurt and I was out for four games," said Rody. "Then I slowly got back to it and now I'm getting more comfortable."

The Stone Bridge defense -- which in the first half recovered a muffed kick return at the Panther 9 and a fumble at the Panther 16, one of which was turned into a 1-yard Marcus Harris plunge after Gouveia found Rositano for a 15-yard back-pedaling catch to the 1 -- dug into the mud and halted a 9-play Massaponax drive at the end of the third with Rositano recovering his third lost ball of the afternoon and then stopped a 10-play drive when Gouveia made a tackle on Jauan Latney on 4th-and-5 from midfield with 5:30 left. Earlier Latney had scored on a 45-yard punt return that put the Panthers ahead before Rody's big pass.

"Our defense was just doing their jobs. We were all doing our own assignments and every time the ball was on the ground I happened to be there and picked it up," said Rositano.

The Panthers got the ball back one final time with 1:33 to play on their own 14 after Rositano made a nice punt that kept the ball away from Latney. With one time out to work with, Massaponax moved it about 20 yards but a sack put the Panthers in deep trouble and finally Stone Bridge's Dexter Rogers intercepted a fourth down pass with 33.7 seconds left to ice the game.

Massaponax quarterback Thomas Robinson found better footing than any other player, gaining 122 yards in the first half on 12 carries. Latney did most of the running in the second half as Massaponax tried to keep it between the tackles as the edges of the field, and anything outside of the hash marks, got muckier as the game went along.

The Panthers ran twice as many plays in the second half as the Bulldogs, 31-17 and finished with 304 total yards to Stone Bridge's 219. Of the Bulldogs 219 total yards, 136 of it came on two passing plays while the Bulldog rushing attack was limited to 41 yards on 30 attempts with Harris, the school's all-time single season rushing leader with nearly 2,000 yards, limited to 38 yards on 21 carries.

"Nobody thought we could do it. Everybody was still down on us, all the way until this game," said Stone Bridge senior linemen Eric Volz.

Despite the notion that coming into this year Stone Bridge might have problems after graduating its most talented senior class ever, Thompson never thought it was a "rebuilding year".

"We don't rebuild ... you can never say you are rebuilding because that is a slap in the face to your seniors," said Thompson. "You go out and play football and you expect to win ... I'm not saying we expected to get this far necessarily, but we expected to win the district and I didn't know what was going to happen after that."