Rye Cove holds strong for a half but can’t match Rappahannock’s speed

Rappahannock High School’s football team came to Salem with a hydroelectric offense fueled by some devastating potential energy.

For the first half of the Virginia High School League Class 1 state championship game, Rye Cove High’s defense was a solid wall of protection from any oncoming spillover.

A tiny crack, just enough to start a trickle, formed early in the third quarter.

Then the whole dam broke.

Rappahannock hit the team from Scott County with a flood inside Salem Stadium, scoring six second-half touchdowns to run away with a 49-14 victory that gave the Raiders their first VHSL football title.

Rappahannock (13-2) trailed 14-6 at halftime, but senior running back Kenneth Madison scored three of his four TDs in the fourth quarter and finished with 225 of his team’s 415 rushing yards.

Quarterback Clyde Kelly Jr. fired a long TD pass and rushed for a pair of TDs highlighted by one of the longest plays in VHSL history.

Kelly rushed for 192 yards and passed for 95 as Rappahannock amassed a whopping 510 yards of total offense.

“It’s a great accomplishment, and it speaks volumes about the kids we put on the football field,” Rappahannock coach William West said. “They’ve been resilient all year long, playing hard, executing, and never putting their heads down. That’s what it’s all about. You talk about playing hard and being here, and then you’ve got to take advantage of all your opportunities.”

Rye Cove (11-4) made it to Salem courtesy of a defense that corralled Grayson County for a 7-6 semifinal victory. The Eagles solved Rappahannock’s offense for 24 minutes and had the Raiders backed up at the 4-yard line early in the third quarter.

Kelly took a shotgun snap, but instantly found himself in serious trouble in the left corner of the end zone. Rye Cove’s defense had the Rappahannock quarterback trapped, perhaps for a safety, but Kelly escaped through a pin-hole of daylight.

He cut through an opening and headed across the field. Soon, more potential tacklers were in Kelly’s wake as he neared the opposite sideline in front of the Rappahannock bench. Rye Cove’s last defenders had an angle, but Kelly was too fast as he completed a 96-yard TD jaunt that probably covered 150 yards of artificial-turf real estate.

“They thought they had me until I cut back and went to the right and we was gone,” Kelly said.

The play was doubly painful for Rye Cove. Carter Roach-Hodge, who scored both of the Eagles’ touchdowns, sustained a shoulder injury attempting to tackle Kelly that sidelined him for the remainder of the evening. Junior lineman Caden Bishop also exited with an ankle injury.

Rye Cove maintained a 14-12 lead, but soon the Eagles’ chances of winning their first state championship were submerged.

Rappahannock took the lead for good at 20-14 on a 66-yard TD pass from Kelly to Christian Destin.

Kelly opened the fourth quarter with a 6-yard TD for a 28-14 lead, then Madison added TD runs of 17, 35 and 16 yards with the last one of his career coming with 58 seconds to play.

The Raiders had the ball on the Rye Cove 5 at the end of the when Kelly took a knee, and the party back in Warsaw was under way.

“Unbelievable,” Kelly said. “We worked ever since ninth grade to be here.” 

West said there was no panic at halftime. Rappahannock overcame a nine-point second-half deficit in its 38-32 semifinal victory over Buffalo Gap. Saturday, the Raiders forced a punt on Rye Cove’s first possession of the second half to set the stage.

“We were fine,” he said. “We felt like we figured out some things on the defensive side of the ball. We filled gaps a little bit better, allowed our linebackers to come downhill and make plays at the line of scrimmage. If we could get some stops I felt like the offense … we just missed some blocks in the first half that we made in the second half.

“You’ve just got to play football. We’re one play away from making a play and we come out of the locker room and get a three-and-out and then the offense makes a huge play. We did what we had to do on that side of ball as well.”

Rye Cove coach Gary Collier was extremely wary of Rappahannock’s big-play potential.

“We talked about it before the game,” Collier said. “They’ve got some playmakers. They’ve got some speed we can’t match. If we can get [Kelly] in the backfield and wrap that up, then it’s a loss. He gets away, and they’ve got several of those kids who can run like that. Kudos to them. They’re a really good, talented football team.”

The Eagles’ early lead came from Roach-Hodge’s two TDs, a 6-yarder with 3:49 left in the first quarter and a 9-yarder with 4:47 to play before halftime.

Rye Cove struggled to move the ball consistently against Rappahannock’s red-clad defense. The Eagles were limited to 135 rushing yards on 52 carries and just 18 yards passing. No Rye Cove play was longer than 9 yards. William Rollins led the Eagles with 65 rushing yards on 17 attempts.

“We had a good game plan,” Collier said. “At halftime we were looking good. That first drive of the third quarter, you always look for that to be the game-changer. Then all of a sudden we get two of our best players hurt. It changed a little bit for what we had to do. We’re not real deep.”

Rappahannock’s trip to the Roanoke Valley was its second in two months. The Raiders filled a last-minute opening on their 2025 schedule with a hastily arranged game at Northside. It resulted in a 19-7 loss for the Raiders, but the experience might have paid off.

Rappahannock avenged a regular-season loss to rival Essex with a 19-16 victory in the Region 1A final.

Getting to a state championship game isn’t easy, and not because Rappahannock’s campus in Warsaw is 235 miles from Salem, while Rye Cove High is located 184 miles from the stadium.

“We felt like should have been here last year,” West said. “We had some injuries at a crucial time of the season. As good as we are this year, I felt like we were even better last year.”

Rye Cove was forced to stop a football game in 2021 because the team did not have enough players to continue.

See also: “Rye Cove goes from unable to finish a game to playing for the state championship.”

Collier took over the team in 2022, and in four years, the former Emory & Henry All-American quarterback took the program to heights never previously seen in the tiny Clinchport community.

“I just feel for these kids. You can see they wear it on their sleeve,” Collier said. “They’ve worked so hard to get here. That’s all I’ve got to talk about, how good these kids have been. This coaching staff and these seniors these four years … we’ve won a lot of football games. We went to battle a lot, went to war a lot. I would rather lose with this bunch than win with anybody else.”

Box score: Rye Cove-Rappahannock

Rye Cove……….7….7….0….0–14

Rappahannock……6….0…14…29–49

First quarter

 RC–Roach-Hodge 6 run (Cress kick), 3:49

 Rapp–Madison 45 run (kick blocked), 2:42

Second quarter

 RC–Roach-Hodge 9 run (Cress kick), 4:47

Third quarter

 Rapp–Kelly 96 run (run failed), 9:32

 Rapp–Destin 66 pass from Kelly (Kelly run), 3:29

Fourth quarter

 Rapp–Kelly 6 run (Madison run), 7:19

 Rapp–Madison 17 run (Setzer kick), 4:46

 Rapp–Madison 35 run (Setzer kick), 3:09

 Rapp–Madison 16 run (Setzer kick), 0:58

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TEAM STATISTICS

………………….RC…….Rapp

First downs………..12………22

Rushes-yards……52-135…..38-415

Yards passing………19………95

Comp-Att-Int…….2-7-2…..6-10-0

Fumbles-lost………3-2……..3-1

Penalties………..2-11…….7-53

Punts………….4-42.8…..2-18.0

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS

 RUSHING–Rye Cove, Rollins 17-65, Roach-Hodge 13-46, Barnette 15-36, Waldon 1-0, Shupe 4-(minus 7), Team 2-(minus 5). Rappahannock, Madison 19-225, Kelly 17-192, Team 2-(minus 2).

 PASSING–Rye Cove, Shupe 2-7-2–18. Rappahannock, Kelly 6-10-0–95.

 RECEIVING–Rye Cove, Jessee 1-12, Lane 1-6. Rappahannock, Destin 2-70, Ellis-Thomas 2-12, Sullivan 1-10, Brown 1-3.