Mistake-prone special-teams play was costly in a season-opening loss for the Wakefield Warriors in high-school football action.
The Warriors fell behind 24-0 early in a 38-17 defeat to the host Falls Church Jaguars the night of Aug. 28.
Wakefield’s offense rallied late, but had fallen too far behind to catch up.
“We shot ourselves in the foot with mishaps on special teams, and that really hurt us by putting us in a big hole on the scoreboard,” Wakefield coach Clarence Martin told ARLnow. “That totally threw us out of our game and made the scenario different regarding how we wanted to play on offense.”
Among those early mistakes on special teams were a fumbled kickoff, a snap over the punter’s head, a dropped punt by the returner and a recovered onside kick by Falls Church.
As a result, Wakefield trailed 18-0 at the end of the first quarter and 24-0 at halftime.
Wakefield rallied with two long touchdown passes in the fourth quarter from Judah Connor to freshman receiver Xavier Winkelmann. He caught seven passes for 140 yards.
“Judah threw the ball well and took command of the offense, and Xavier is a pretty good athlete with a lot of skill,” Martin said. “It was just too little, too late.”
Connor was 13 of 22 passing for 176 yards with no interceptions. Chris Gilpin had three catches and Andrew Mason and Chris Sewell each had two. Connor was the leading rusher with 13 yards, and Saswat Aryal had seven.
Andre Larue ran for a two-point conversion for Wakefield, Andrew Jackson kicked an extra point and the Warriors also scored on a safety.
Aryal had two kick returns for 24 yards.
Defensively, Sean Perry led the way in tackles with 17, including two for losses. Mason made nine tackles and Nathen Gray eight with a sack. Mason had a pass deflection.
Joshua Radka and Santiago Aceves Villanueva had six tackles each, and each recovered fumbles.
“What I liked is we continued to fight, play hard,” Martin said. “We stayed with it after we fell way behind.”
The coach believed the Warriors were hurt by not having a second scrimmage, because the opponent backed out of that contest.
“We would have worked on a lot of those special-teams things in that scrimmage,” Martin said. “But no excuses. We will get better.”
