Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 10, 1993 TAG: 9312100022
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-13 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RAY COX STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A couple of what seemed to be innocuous little moves at the time could have been the linchpin in Annandale High's terrific football season.
Coming off a 10-2 1992 season with 12 starters back, Coach Dick Adams' Atoms figured to be sound this year, even very good. But Adams and his team found out that they weren't quite as good as they thought after the second game of the season.
Lake Braddock, with its killer defense, stopped the Atoms, 6-2, and Adams concluded changes had to be made.
"We were trying to have it so that we could have as few players as possible go both ways," he said. "We found out in the Lake Braddock game that we weren't going to be able to do that."
The solution, Adams and his coaches concluded, was to assign a couple of his best players to the offensive line, thereby giving them double duty. One was Maurice Daniels, a 6-foot-2, 210-pound junior, and the other was Steve Jreige, a 6-foot, 202-pound senior. Both of them were deployed as guards. Daniels, a two-time all-Northern-Region linebacker and this year's regional defensive player of the year, had never played guard before.
The results have been spectacular, which is one of the reasons that Annandale will be playing undefeated Pulaski County for the Group AAA Division 6 state championship Saturday.
"After [the moves], we kind of went on a tear," Adams said.
Indeed. Annandale outscored its next three opponents, W.T. Woodson, Falls Church and Washington-Lee, 182-7. That catapulted the Atoms (12-1) on an 11-game winning streak that carried them into the finals against the defending state champions. The teams play 2 p.m. Saturday at W.T. Woodson.
The defense has been terrific. Daniels, Jreige (who plays on the defensive line), safety Prince Addy and associates have seen to that. The Atoms have yielded only 6.8 points per game and have three shutouts. Among their most recent heroics, they nipped powerful Thomas Dale (the 1992 state runner-up) 10-7 in overtime at Dale last week in the semifinals and whipped West Springfield (who bombed Lake Braddock) 25-7 in the regional championship.
by CNB