ALTAVISTA — Mike Scharnus spent most of Friday night in tunnel-vision mode, aware of only the situations on the field in front of him and the instructions blaring into his ear through his headset.
At one point, when a referee complained that Scharnus kept walking on to the field to talk to his players, Scharnus’ response was, “I didn’t know. I wasn’t aware.”
But after Daelyn Myers ripped through the Dan River front line for a 41-yard touchdown run late in the fourth quarter, essentially sealing Altavista’s 37-12 romp of the Wildcats, Scharnus slipped out of the headset and yelled, “Yeah baby!” He knew the work was done, and the celebration of what he would later call the biggest victory in his three years as head coach at Altavista had begun.
Early in the week, Scharnus chose to move Johnny Wimbish from quarterback to a hybrid slot/tailback position, and he called up sophomore Rick Adams from the JV team to take snaps.
Adams showed little in the way of nerves Friday, connecting three times with fellow sophomore Jarrod Hunt on touchdown passes. The third of those TD strikes put Altavista up 23-12 early in the fourth, as the Colonels (5-1, 1-1 Dogwood) broke open a tight game.
“I hope it’s just going to make us a more diverse team,” Scharnus said. “Johnny is just an athlete, running the ball and catching it.
“(Adams) is a gun slinger. That’s what one of the coaches said. … It’s one game. Let’s not get too excited. But he had the ice water in the veins thing going, I guess.”
Hunt, who caught TD passes of 14, 36 and 33 yards, said he sensed no nerves in his new quarterback, or in the offense in general.
“I told him to keep his composure and just do his thing,” Hunt said. “And that’s what he did.”
The Colonels took advantage of three Dan River fumbles, turning two of them into 10 points. The Altavista defense was smothering for much of the night, holding Dan River to 97 yards of total offense, 51 of those coming on the game’s final drive against the Colonels’ second stringers.
“Our kids just have to fight and show more composure,” Dan River coach Ferrell Edmunds said. “We just weren’t as focused as we should have been.”
The Wildcats (4-2, 1-1) trailed 17-0 in the second quarter when Deon Hairston ripped off a 93-yard kickoff return for a touchdown. Trey Edmunds’ 8-yard touchdown run in the third quarter cut the lead to 17-12, but the Wildcats struggled to move the ball after that.
Down 23-12, Dan River tried to make something happen, but Edmunds threw an interception that Travis Graves returned 29 yards for a touchdown, pushing the Colonels’ lead to 30-12 with 7:21 left.
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