All-Tidewater Breakdown

Bryan Black, the Pilot’s high school sports editor, gives us a rundown of the All-Tidewater first and second teams ...
 
This year's All-Tidewater football team might have been the most difficult to select in the history of the team.
 
Now, even though those of us making the final selections have a lot of years of experience with the process, that's a statement none of us is qualified to make since the team has been selected since the 1930s.
 
Still, it was beyond tough -- tough to the point that we love this team -- and we hate this team. Let me clarify -- we love this team for all its talent. The talent is mind-boggling. But we hate this team because all the talent made it impossible for us to structure the team as we normally would like.
 
We like the All-Tidewater team to be a real team, one that could be put on the field.
 
Yet we have three first-team quarterbacks on this team. We don't like that.
 
But, in the end, we felt there was simply no way that we could justify leaving Bayside's E.J. Manuel, Great Bridge's Casey Turner or Ocean Lakes' Marcus Davis off the first team. And we like that. We like having all three of these guys on the first team.
 
So whether we like it or we don't like it, let's just enjoy it.
 
Quarterbacks
 
Turner and Manuel rate as two of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play high school football in South Hampton Roads. Turner's statistics are stunning. And Manuel, committed to Florida State, is the most highly recruited pure quarterback ever out of South Hampton Roads. Some recruiting gurus see him as perhaps the top high school quarterback prospect in the country. As for Davis, what an unbelievable season he had. He wasn't even supposed to play quarterback this year. He was supposed to play wide receiver. A knee injury to teammate Dan Pitts pushed Davis behind center, and all he did was pass for 20 touchdowns, run for another 12 and lead Ocean Lakes into the playoffs
 
So, in the end, we felt our team wouldn't be complete without all three of these players on the first team. So we have three first-team All-Tidewater quarterbacks. Phillip Sims, who had a remarkable postseason run for Oscar Smith, is our second-team quarterback, nosing out Western Branch's Kevin Newsome.
 
Running backs
 
We also have three first-team All-Tidewater running backs, and those choices weren't really tough at all. They are clearly the best of a great group of running backs this season -- Salem's Kevin Whaley, Western Branch's Hykeem Brodie and Smithfield's Dyrell Roberts.
 
There was discussion as to whether Roberts belonged on the first team since it appears that he might be the first Western Tidewater player ever to make first-team All-Tidewater. Western Tidewater players have made the second team from time to time throughout the years but apparently never the first team.
 
But Roberts, who has committed to Virginia Tech, clearly is deserving. His numbers are staggering -- he scored 43 touchdowns and had more than 2,200 yards rushing this season in 10 games. He's a solid choice and belongs on the first team even though players west of Suffolk never have made the cut before.
 
The second-team running backs are Oscar Smith's Lonnie Andrews, Kellam's Javon Boddie and Landstown's Sterlin Phifer. Indian River's Domnick Bethea, Norview's Marquez Fields and Booker T. Washington's Jayvon Smith were considered but did not make the cut.
 
The extra quarterbacks, though, forced us to cut back somewhere else. That place was wide receiver.
 
First, an interlude -- when we select All-Tidewater, players go on at one position and one position only. A player cannot make it on offense and defense. We want a different player in each position. That way we get more players on the team. A player also cannot make it on the first team at one position and make it on the second team at another position.
 
Wide receivers
 
So, back to the wide receivers. Some of the very best wide receivers also were some of the very best defensive backs, so that's where you'll find some of those guys. More on that later.
 
With three quarterbacks on the first team, we put just one player at wide receiver on the first team -- Great Bridge's Logan Heastie. That left us with some tremendous wide receivers on the second team, but this is a place where we made some extremely difficult decisions. In another year, all three second-team wide receivers -- Ocean Lakes' Randall Dunn, Oscar Smith's Kerry Boykins and Landstown's Nick Mayers -- all might have made first team. But not this year. In fact, in some other year, Booker T. Washington's Cordarol Madison might even have made the first team, but he didn’t even make the second team. Other notables who missed the wide receiver cut included Wilson's Jon Lewis and Norcom's Dexter Rodgers.
 
A note on Boykins -- he's clearly a first-team talent. He was first-team All-Tidewater as a junior, but he missed a good bit of his senior season due to a knee injury. Without his postseason production, he likely wouldn't have made second-team All-Tidewater this year. In the end, given the choices we were faced with, we could not justify giving him a first-team spot this year. But we definitely felt he deserved a second-team spot.
 
Offensive line
 
At center, Western Branch's D.J. Skinner, an outstanding long snapper, got the first-team nod over second-teamer William Eller of Salem. Kellam's Matt Gallardo and Lake Taylor's Maxwell Davis also were considered.
 
At guard, we have one of those offense-defense guys. We put Jarmara Gray on the offense at guard, and he just as easily could have made the team at defensive end. But by putting him at guard, a defensive line spot was freed up for a deserving player. The other first-team guard is Salem's Tim Jernigan. The second-team guards -- Green Run's Jeff Crawford and Francisco Clifford of King's Fork -- are both outstanding linemen as well, and either or both would have made fine first-team selections, so they both just missed by a whisker. No other guards really received much consideration. Gray, Jernigan, Crawford and Clifford were seen as clearly the best around.
 
At tackle, we started with a no-brainer choice in Maury's Vinston Painter, widely considered one of the nation's top offensive line prospects and a guy who made Virginia Tech's coaches very happy last week. Salem's Donald Moore, the lineman most responsible over the past few years for helping Kevin Whaley become South Hampton Roads' all-time leading rusher, is the other first-team tackle. The second-team tackles -- Great Bridge's Michael Price and Western Branch's Corey Mims -- are tremendous as well but just a hair behind the first-teamers. Like at guard, no other tackles really received much consideration, with Painter, Moore, Mims and Price all seen as clearly the best around.
 
At tight end, we have another guy who could have made the team on offense or defense -- Deep Creek's Devin Arrington. We had him on the team at one point at linebacker but moved him to the tight end spot to free up a spot for a deserving linebacker. Kellam's Andrew Turner, committed to ODU, is the second-team tight end.
 
Kickers
 
At kicker, we had two really good choices -- Cox's Drew Jarrett and Lake Taylor's Jay Zardee. Playing on a team that didn't have many scoring opportunities, Jarrett didn't have a lot of chances to showcase himself. But when he did, he took advantage, making a 50-yard field goal that is one of the longest ever in South Hampton Roads history and making three others that were 40 yards plus. That's impressive, and that gave him the edge over Zardee, who is the second-team kicker. Both players are juniors and will be splitting lots of uprights again in the fall of 2008.
 
At punter, with Jarrett, the All-Beach punter, already on the All-Tidewater first team at kicker, the door was open for us to select Nansemond River's Alton Donovan as our first-teamer and Maury's Orion Hall as our second-teamer.
 
DEFENSE
 
That brings us to the defense, which is just absolutely loaded -- both in terms of overall talent and with guys who could have just as easily made the team at one of the offensive spots.
 
Linebackers
 
The first-team linebackers include three guys who were their district Defensive Player of the Year -- Salem's Lyndell Gibson, Oscar Smith's Perry Jones and Lake Taylor's Mike Privott. Putting Arrington on the first team at tight end allowed us to also make Oscar Smith's Jerod Askew a first-team selection at linebacker. As second-team linebackers, we have Granby's Telvion Clark, Green Run's Shalieq Worrell and Maury's Lorenzo Branche -- all outstanding players yet all players who are a notch below the four first-team selections. And there was some outstanding talent who didn't even make the cut for a second-team spot, including Salem's Martell Cuffee and Western Branch's Kiman Edwards.
 
Defensive line
 
On the defensive line, we have five first-teamers -- defensive ends James Rainey of Ocean Lakes and Terrence Pugh of Indian River, and defensive tackles Klinton Ruff of Norview (committed to Virginia), Joe Jones of Green Run and Evan Hailes of Oscar Smith. We put five other excellent linemen on the second team -- Tallwood's Chris Johnson, Indian River's Randolph Shandley, Western Branch's Amos Scott, Salem's Tyvonte Lawton and Lake Taylor's Travis Williams. And, again, there were excellent players who didn't even make the second-team cut, including Maury's Jamal Giddens, Norcom's Anthony Rogers, Lake Taylor's Clarence Parham and Bayside's Ron Lewis.
 
Defensive backs
At defensive back, we have a couple of those guys who could have made the first team at wide receiver -- Oscar Smith's Todd Harrelson, who simply had a fabulous senior season, and Bayside's Marquel Thomas. UNC is getting one heckuva player in Harrelson, and why in the world a major D1 program hasn't snapped up Thomas is difficult to understand.
 
The other two first-team defensive backs are Lenny Paiva, Lake Taylor's do-everything player. Paiva, a quarterback/wide receiver/defensive back/kick returner/punter, was not going to make the first-team offense on this team, but he certainly was going to be first team somewhere, and that somewhere is defensive back.
 
The final first-team defensive back is another guy who deserved a first-team spot somewhere, and he wasn't going to be one of the three first-team running backs. That would be Lake Taylor's Jay Jay Simmons, who was the Eastern District Offensive Player of the Year and yet another jewel of a player on this All-Tidewater first team.
 
The second-team defensive backs feature a ton of talent as well -- Churchland's Chavis Coley, Green Run's Tavon Gatlin, Salem's Tyheem Lawton, Greenbrier Christian's Josh Healey and Ocean Lakes' T.J. Cowart. Indian River's Donald Smith just missed the cut, as did Western Branch's Olimas Robison, Maury's Ricky Nichols, Oscar Smith's Tony Barnes and Ocean Lakes' Shamarco Thomas.
 
So that's it, a breakdown of the 2007 All-Tidewater football team, an incredibly difficult team to select.
 
Still, we can rest easy in these selections knowing that South Hampton Roads high school football fans are blessed to have such abundant talent to enjoy.
 
One of the great things about high school football is that just when you think you've seen the best you'll ever see, another youngster comes along who makes you smile and enjoy his talents even more. The pipeline is neverending, and that's one reason it's so much fun.
 
If anyone has any questions about our All-Tidewater team or what is written in this blog item, please feel free to send your questions to Bryan Black, the Pilot's high school sports editor, at bryan.black@pilotonline.com
 

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