WS Chronicle

The Reynolds Demons came into their game against North Forsyth reeling off of the previous week’s defeat at the hands of Reidsville High.  Not only did the Demons lose the game, but they also lost their starting quarterback Caden Davis to injury.  They bounced back in a major way last Thursday with their 26-8 victory over the Vikings.

Reynolds set the tone early by establishing their running game.  Trevon Murphy, who scored three rushing touchdowns, led a running back corps that found open running lanes most of the night.  Couple that with a stifling defense that held the Vikings scoreless until late in the fourth and that is a recipe for victory most often.

“I thought we executed very well and the defense played really aggressive,” said Reynolds head coach Pat Crowley of his team’s performance.  “We shut them down for the most part defensively and offensively we did pretty well, but we need to be a little sharper in our passing attack.”

Crowley credited the play of his running backs.  Murphy, along with Travon Bethea and Jamari Slade, all played very well against North Forsyth.  Crowley said they are pretty tough to bring down when they “get after it.”The Vikings, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have the same energy level the Demons came to play with.  North Forsyth was stagnant on offense but played with heart on the defensive end all game.

“Man, we came out flat, probably the flattest I’ve seen in a while,” said Viking head coach Corey Stewart on his team’s play Thursday night.  “I told them yesterday that I didn’t think we had a good practice and it kind of showed early that we weren’t ready to play.”

Trailing 26-0 at the half, one would have thought the game was going to get even worse.  As a credit to the heart of the Viking team, they came out with a renewed vigor in the second half and did not surrender a point.  Unfortunately, offensively they were hamstrung by the Demons.

Stewart says he went into halftime and told his team that he wanted to see the team that nearly beat the Glenn Bobcats the week earlier.  They fell to Glenn 12-6 in overtime and Glenn was undefeated at the time.  He says he felt they matched up evenly with the Demons but they came out with more “fight” than his team did.

“Finally in the second half, we started clicking, but by that time we couldn’t do anything on offense,” Stewart said.  “I thought we could build off last week where we went into overtime with Glenn, and we will take some positives from this game, but I wasn’t too happy with our start.”

Even without starting quarterback Caden Davis, the Reynolds offense flowed fairly well, according to Crowley.

He says he didn’t change much of the offensive playbook heading into this game because of the confidence he had in quarterback Shavon Revel. Crowley says he was happy with the win but told the players they cannot become complacent in the second half.  He credits North Forsyth for not giving up in the second half. Crowley said he used the Reidsville game as an example to his team as to how they need to play on offense and defense.  He says if they can maintain that level of consistency, it will bode well for the future of the season and program as a whole.

“The Reidsville program is one where they run the same thing from kindergarten to high school,” said Crowley.  “I told them that we probably had better athletes but they executed better than us.  I told our guys that we need to get to that level of executing and we did a pretty good job of doing that tonight, especially on defense.”

Stewart spoke to his guys following the game about how proud he was of the effort they gave, especially in the second half.

“I talked to them and I explained that I wasn’t happy with the first half but they already knew that,” Stewart continued.  “But I also told them I was proud of the effort in the second half and that’s all you can really ask for from kids.  We are going to go back to the tape and fix whatever it is, and we will go from there.”