Gameday Power Poll - Week 9
TJ Peeler and Broad Run ran away from Loudoun County in the second half to keep their #1 ranking and advance to 9-0 on the year. Only a game with Potomac Falls seperates them from attaining regular season perfection for the third straight year.
Photo By: Jan Johnson / Action Photos Unlimited
After all the craziness which occurred in Week 8, this most recent weekend of football, seemed a bit... dull maybe?
There weren't any insane upsets, no great finishes and hardly any movement inside the Power Poll. Our #1 team, Broad Run, was involved in a thrilling contest with Loudoun County, which carried with it big Dulles District implications, and #9 Stone Bridge again had their hands full inside the Liberty District, but other than that, nothing really exciting happened.
But take a big look at things, and maybe this says a lot about what it's like playing in the rain and on Monday. All those shocking upsets and close finishes occurred either in the rain on Friday or on a Monday, which is a day of the week that presents all sorts of various mental and physical challenges to teams.
Think about it. Rain, and lots of it, nullifies a lot of the speed that some teams are so reliant upon to win games. Furthermore, with the advent of so many spread offenses in the Northern Virginia area, the challenges of operating that offense are magnified ten-fold in sloppy conditions. Maybe Edison doesn't lose to Falls Church in terrible conditions, maybe Lee and that speed they carry doesn't get nullified in the rain against West Potomac.
Then there are the Monday games. Keep in mind that teams do not practice on Sundays, and are therefore jumping right into game mode on Monday. That's tough to do and it's equally tough to replicate the right mindset that accompanies a team the whole week leading up to a Friday night game. So maybe Robinson and Stone Bridge don't suffer their lone loss of the season if they played on Friday. Maybe the off-day on Sunday and Monday date flustered them a bit where they didn't come to play. Who knows.
But let's be clear here. We're not making excuses. The rain doesn't fall down on one team and not the other. If you're a great team, then you learn to play through adversity and manage to win. Rather, we're just pointing out how very interesting it is to see how the weekend that had all those big upsets and close finishes occurred when the rain was a big factor and when each team's physical and mental capacities were tampered with.
This past weekend, there were no such occurrences. Only in the Broad Run and Stone Bridge games were the outcomes put in jeopardy, but that again gets traced back to the rain and teams being forced to play on Monday as opposed to Friday. Again, we're not making excuses for those two, just pointing out how interesting it is to see outside elements having such a crucial role in high school football.
