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Friday, Aug. 25 – In a dominant performance from start to finish, the Parry McCluer High School football team cruised to a 56-14 home win over county rival Rockbridge County in the season opener at Bobby Williams Field on Friday night in Buena Vista.
With Jeremiah Brockenbrough making his head coaching debut for PM, the Fighting Blues, who had not beaten the Wildcats since 2016, snapped a five-game losing streak to RC. Other than 2020, when the fall season was canceled due COVID-19, the teams have met every year since the Blues’ last victory in the rivalry. Of the 21 times the two schools have faced off on the football field, RC, a Class 3 school, has won 12 times, while PM, a smaller Class 1 school, has won nine times.
The last two meetings were close, with the Wildcats winning 14-6 in 2021 and 32-29 last year.
PM had a strong team defensive effort and an outstanding offensive performance from running back JJ Jones, a transfer from RC, as the senior scored three touchdowns. His first TD came on a 50-yard run just 56 seconds into the game, which started at 8 p.m. instead of 7 out of an abundance of caution due to the heat.
The Blues scored again when sophomore quarterback Nathan Glass, making his first start, threw the first of his three yard TD passes on a 21-yard toss to Aaron Pruett with 5:19 left in the first quarter, and a two-point conversion run by Jackson Brockenbrough extended PM’s lead to 14-0. PM added two more TDs in the period. Glass passed to Jones for an 80-yard TD, and Pruett recovered an RC fumble at the 1-yard line and ran the ball into the end zone. A two-point conversion run by Jones stretched PM’s lead to 28-0 with 49 seconds left in the quarter.
PM added two more TDs in the second quarter, on a 34-yard run by Parker Camden and a 5-yard pass from Glass to Jackson Brockenbrough, and took a 43-0 lead into halftime.
With a running clock in the second half because the lead was 35 points or more the whole way, the Wildcats finally got on the scoreboard just past the midway point of the third quarter when junior quarterback Jayden Layman scored on a 2-yard run, but the Blues responded right away with a kickoff return of about 65 yards for a TD by Jones, and an extra-point kick made it 50-6.
RC scored its other TD at the end of the third quarter when Josiah Saunders made a 1-yard plunge into the end zone, and Layman passed to JP Welsh for a two-point conversion, cutting PM’s lead to 50-14.
PM sophomore running back Zavion Dunn scored the final TD of the game on a 13-yard run with 1:58 left.
Both the Blues and Wildcats will play at home next Friday at 7 p.m., with RC facing Staunton (0-1) and PM taking on Cumberland (0-1).
For the full story, photos and stats from the opener, with predictions for next week, please see our Aug. 30 newspaper.
