Wood holds on late to defeat Meridian

FALLS CHURCH — It required every possible second for the James Wood High School football team to close out its game on Friday night.

But while Meridian made the Colonels sweat over the last few minutes of the meeting, James Wood ultimately defeated the Mustangs 22-19 on the road.

Spurred by a fourth-quarter, game-winning drive on offense and two clutch defensive stops late in the game, the Colonels (4-2) executed when it mattered most in a matchup that featured just 210 total yards from James Wood and 258 from Meridian.

After facing a heavy dose of Meridian running back Oumar Thompson all night, James Wood linebacker Vincent Salvati and the Colonels’ defense knew what was coming when the Mustangs (1-4) took over down by three points with just over four minutes left in the fourth quarter.

With Thompson having already carried the ball 25 times on the night for nearly 130 yards, the Mustangs gave him four carries in five plays. Although Thompson picked up one first down, the Mustangs tackled him behind the line of scrimmage on third down to force a fourth-and-7. On fourth down, the Colonels forced an incompletion from quarterback Cruz Ruoff, giving the ball back to the Colonels with one minute and 30 seconds left.

“We knew [Thompson] was going to run that counter or that power, and we sensed it on that play during that [drive] and came up big,” Salvati said.

After getting the ball back, Wood’s offense chewed up the clock and left just 13.8 seconds left for the Mustangs to get into field-goal position or travel 64 yards for a game-winning score.

After two incompletions, the Mustangs had just 3.7 seconds and one play to work with. On the final play of the game, Wood’s defensive front forced enough pressure on Ruoff that he was barely able to attempt a throw past the line of scrimmage. With the ball hitting the turf as the clock hit zero, the Colonels’ sideline erupted in celebration amid the three-point victory.

Ruoff was 3-of-15 passing for 13 yards, as the Mustangs relied heavily on the ground game.

“We knew they were gonna run the ball all game, and right there, we really stepped up big,” Salvati said of Wood’s defensive performance. “All of the guys were running the football, and right there, we pulled through when we needed to pull through.”

James Wood head coach Todd Wilson challenged his team to play a complete, four-quarter game on Friday. He thought the defensive stop was reflective of the Colonels' potential on defense.

"This is a physical sport, so we're trying to make sure our guys know that it's OK to run in there and wrap and tackle and play within the whistle," Wilson said. "So that's what we're doing, and that's what it looked like on that last drive."

Friday wasn’t quite the four-quarter performance that Wilson was looking for, but he was happy to pull out the gritty win.

“We told the kids their record doesn't really reflect their mentality,” Wilson said. “They're a tough team, and they play hard. Our kids kind of played hard at times, then we kind of laid back a little bit, and we picked the energy up again. So, we told them at the end of the game, we got to just put four quarters of that effort that we see from them from time to time into a four-quarter football game. I like us when we're doing that. When we're not, we'll be in these types of battles.”

In the absence of starting running back Kobe Mason, who didn’t play Friday after getting banged up against Handley last week, James Wood turned to its starting signal-caller to be the bell cow in the backfield.

Sophomore quarterback Owen Neal paved the way for the Colonels, scoring two of their three touchdowns on the night.

Following a 4-yard touchdown run by Meridian running back Jack Moore with 6:10 left in the fourth quarter, Neal came up clutch for the Colonels, leading them on what ended up being the game-winning drive.

Starting the drive on the Colonels’ own 34-yard line, Neal took back-to-back quarterback keepers for a total of 15 yards to set Wood up near midfield. On the third play of the drive, Neal lofted a pass down the middle to wide receiver Xavier Price, who couldn’t come down with it as he took a blow from two Meridian defenders. Although it was an incompletion, an unnecessary roughness penalty on the hit to Price moved the Colonels into enemy territory. Following a 10-yard run by running back Dominik Ramirez, the Colonels were set at the Mustangs’ 23-yard line.

One play later, Neal kept the ball on a quarterback option play, scampered toward the right sideline and cut it back up toward the middle and outraced Meridian defenders for a 23-yard rushing touchdown. The five-play, 66-yard drive was ultimately the game-winning drive for the Colonels.

“I was just making my read of the D-end,” Neal said. “He crashed down, and then I saw nobody back there. I just ran into the house.”

Neal finished the game with a team-high 108 rushing yards on 14 carries.

“We game plan for our certain formations,” Neal said. “We knew that they were gonna unload the box. Our five [linemen] was gonna be on their five, and we had confidence in that, and they had confidence in me to run the ball.”

Wilson said his team planned on using Neal as a rusher more on Friday. Neal took four carries for 47 yards on the Colonels’ five-play opening drive of the game that ended with a 4-yard touchdown run from Neal to get his team on the board.

“We noticed that they [were] real light in the box when we went empty and things like that,” Wilson said. “We just felt good with our five against their four or five, and we [wanted to] let Owen keep the ball and see what he could do. And he had a good night on the ground tonight.”

Ramirez was the Colonels’ second-leading rusher with 42 yards on 10 carries. The junior tailback scored a four-yard touchdown and a 2-point conversion at the 3:55 mark in the third quarter that gave the Colonels a 15-12 lead.

After both teams had three-and-outs on the next two drives of the game, the Mustangs responded with a 53-yard drive that was capped off by a 4-yard touchdown on an end around by running back Jack Moore. Neal scored the game-winning touchdown less than two minutes later.

After suffering back-to-back losses to Kettle Run and Handley, Wilson will look to build on Friday’s win and carry the momentum into next week.

“It's a great win,” Wilson said. “This one's over with, and now we're moving on and looking to next week. It always feels good after a win, especially the last two weeks. We stumbled there a little bit in the two previous games, so it definitely feels better to get back on the winning side."

The Colonels will have a tall task when they travel to Sherando (6-0) next Friday.

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