LINDSIDE, W.Va. — James Monroe junior quarterback Layton Dowdy passed for five touchdowns and rushed for another score as the top-seeded Mavericks defeated No. 16 Sherman, 48-15 in the opening round of the WVSSAC Class A playoffs presented by Toyota.
JMHS (9-1) led 14-12 midway through the second quarter, but the Mavericks scored 34 unanswered points to advance to the quarterfinal round for the third consecutive season.
“I think some of it is one playing 16. We had the Bluefield game last week,” said James Monroe head coach John Mustain. “That was some of it. That’s a good team, to be a small school like they are. They are smaller than us. They played hard. One thing that really hurt us was the kickoff return there early. Other than that, defensively I thought we did really well. It was a little slow getting going on the offensive side.”
Dowdy tossed touchdown passes to Chaz Boggs [35 & 10 yards], Brock Parker [14 & 4 yards] and Ryan Manns [12 yards] and he rushed for an 11-yard score.
“It seems like in the last three or four weeks, his passing game has really picked up,” Mustain said. “That’s got to continue. You can’t solely rely on the run like you can’t solely rely on the pass. Anything we can do to where we are multi-faceted, that’s definitely going to help us in the next few weeks.”
Parker accounted for the other James Monroe touchdown with a 1-yard run to open the scoring. Parker and Boggs handled the majority of the rushes while leading rusher Cooper Ridgeway played mostly on defense.
“Cooper is a little bit banged up right now. Brock, his first game of the season last year, his freshman year, I think he was the leading rusher. He has shown us he can get the job done. The thing I am really happy with Brock is how he has been playing linebacker lately. He has been doing a much better job on the defensive side of the ball.”
The Mavericks will host No. 8 Cameron (10-1) in the Class A quarterfinals next weekend. The Dragons defeated Man, 40-8 earlier on Saturday.
Sherman (6-5) received first-half touchdowns from Andrew Simpson on a 93-yard kickoff return and a 10-yard Elijah Pauley touchdown toss to Gerald Lester.