Paulsen: Chargers, Bulldogs Impress In Week 1
I don't get chills very easily. I never have. But when I'm standing in the broadcast booth on a Friday night, staring out at a perfectly manicured field, they come a whole lot easier.
For each of the past three years I've spent my Friday evenings calling football games on the Gameday Radio Network. Somehow I was able to luck into being assigned to the region's finest game each week. That means that I haven't just been watching football from a prime seat. I've been watching quality football.
Two weeks into the freshly initiated 2008 season, I've already had the pleasure of watching a couple of my favorite teams take to the field.
In week one I watched the Stone Bridge Bulldogs explode for 42-points in the inaugural game of their season. A couple days later it was Chantilly's turn to impress me, and the Chargers sure did. Mother Nature didn't want them to, but after waiting for two rain-outs in three days, the boys in Purple won a close game to begin their season.
There normally aren't many surprises in High School football. If a team has a stud rusher than he's going to get a ton of carries, and if a club has a quarterback capable of dissecting a secondary, then his coach is going to ask him to do so.
I knew before I pulled into the parking lot at Stone Bridge that I was going to see Patrick Thompson slinging the ball all over the field. And I didn't need to check any of last season's box scores, before getting to Chantilly high school this past Monday, to know that Torian Pace was going to be running wild.
With that said though, there were a couple of questions about those two powerhouses -ranked #1 and #3 in the Gameday Power Poll - that I didn't have answers to until after I saw them play this week.
For the top-ranked Bulldogs I wasn't sure how the team was going to replace Ryan Moody's 19 receiving touchdowns of a year ago. I now have that answer, which I can best spell out with just two words. Michael Prince.
In Chantilly's case, my curiosity started and ended under center, with last year's starting quarterback Austin Decker having moved on to Virginia Tech. That curiosity subsided midway through Chantilly's pre game warm-ups, when I saw Roger Strittmatter heave a tightly-spiraling deep ball 40-yards downfield.
Prince's four touchdown performance may well have been the finest individual effort of week one. During a post game interview with our network on the field, the Stone Bridge Senior said that his goal is "to score every time I touch the ball." On Friday night he almost did.
Strittmatter didn't quite do a Prince impression but the freshly anointed starting quarterback did a terrific job guiding the Chargers' offense. The gorgeous touchdown he threw would eventually make the difference in the outcome, but he had proven himself long before his right arm helped Chantilly dent the scoreboard.
Like the Chargers, the Bulldogs had little trouble making the playoffs last year. The difference between the two teams is that Stone Bridge was celebrating on the field in Charlottesville, Virginia when the lights dimmed for the final time a year ago. Chantilly will look to experience that elusive feeling this season, as the Bulldogs look to recapture it.
Judging from what I've seen so far this season, with a week having already gone by, I'd say that both have a legitimate chance at doing so.
