After holding three of their seven opponents scoreless during the spring season, the Goochland football program came up with a pair of postgame cheers to commemorate their shutouts.
At times, the Bulldogs would chant in unison, “Goose what? “Goose egg!” On other occasions, the reigning James River District champions would make a plea for donuts to the coaching staff for the following Monday.
Following Friday’s 28-0 blanking of Fluvanna, the goose egg chant was in full affect, but coach Alex Fruth did indicate that Krispy Kreme donuts might be in the team’s future.
The win marks Goochalnd’s first shutout of the 2021 season and the 11th of Fruth’s tenure as the head coach of the Bulldogs.
“We have a really good group of kids on defense,” Fruth said. “They’re fast, they’re physical, and they don’t stop going to the ball. Our defense has played great all year and this was really just another example of them stepping up the occasion.”
The vaunted Goochland defense, which defensive coordinator Dan Summitt has led under Fruth and Joe Fowler before that, scored the first touchdown of the game for the visitors.
On the first play from scrimmage following a 34-yard field goal from Tyler Black, CJ Towles broke up a deep pass, batted it around a few times, and eventually came down with an interception.
After finally securing the ball, Towles promptly wove through a field of would-be tacklers for a pick-six, setting the stage for a big night from the Goochland defense.
The Bulldogs (3-2) bagged two more turnovers on the night, both of which led to two of the offense’s three touchdowns.
Rique Alvarez-Palacios fell on top of a Fluvanna fumble at midfield, and Towles brought in a second interception midway through the fourth quarter.
“This defense, we carry ourselves high- we think of ourselves as one of the best in our area… We just had to give up a zero. That was the idea. There was a talk of some donuts, so hopefully we get those,” defensive lineman Kai Burton said. “The first drive, [Fluvanna] started driving. We came to the sidelines and made some adjustments. We realized that we just had to raise our intensity a little bit.”
The Flucos (1-4) opened the game with a five-minute drive and marched to the Goochland 30, before being turned away on fourth down.
Fluvanna’s next offensive play was the Towles pick-six, and the Flucos were seldom heard from again on that side of the ball.
Towles, who also serves as Goochland’s quarterback, made a few nice plays for the Bulldogs on offense.
Following the fumble recovery by Alvarez-Palacios, Towles promptly sprinted 50 yards and was stopped just short of the goal line. Towles dove into the end zone two plays later, to give the visitors a 22-0 lead at intermission.
He later added a 16-yard quarterback keeper shortly after bringing in his second interception on the other side of the ball.
Twenty-eight points marked a season high for a Goochalnd offense that had to replace a number of key contributors from the spring season. Despite putting up just six points in the second half, Fruth feels that his Towles and the rest of the unit took a big step forward in the win over Fluvanna.
“[Towles] did a really good job of making the right decisions,” Fruth said. “There were times when we ran some RPO concepts and he pulled the ball or threw it. We also ran some read-options and he made some great decisions on that. That kid just did good thing after good thing.”
Towles helped set up Goochland’s first offensive touchdown of the night in the second quarter. The versatile athlete completed a short swing pass to Jermiyah Mills, who scampered 43 yards to the Flucos’ 14 yardline.
Goochland tailback Gabe Liptak then rushed for three and 10 yards before marching into the end zone from a yard out. Fluvanna put together a nice drive late in the fourth quarter before the Bulldogs’ blocked a field goal attempt from 36 yards out to preserve the goose egg.
The triumph marked Goochland’s first Jefferson District win since rejoining the league this fall.
The Bulldogs had a rude welcome back to the JD last Friday, with a 17-7 home loss to undefeated Western Albemarle. With two district games under their belts and a few key ones on the docket for late-October and early-November, Fruth feels that he’s gotten a good taste of what is to come.
“We know that this is a tough district. We know that every week we’re going to see a pretty good team and that in some manner or form, they’re going to present different challenges,” Fruth said. “Western was obviously really well-coached. They did a great job on defense. Fluvanna, they caused their own problems. They may not be what they want to be right now, but that’s a physical team — they ran right at us. They had a good game plan for what they wanted to do.”
