LCA hosts Gretna in season-opening clash of small-school titans

When Liberty Christian Academy’s football team hosts Gretna in a season-opener tonight at Liberty University, it will be a showdown between the area’s two most successful programs over the past six seasons.

The Bulldogs have won three of the past five Virginia Independent Schools Division I state championships with either Chris or Mike Rocco at quarterback. The two-time defending Group A, Division 2, state champion Hawks captured back-to-back Group AA, Division 3, state titles in 2003 and 2004, with Vic Hall, now a senior quarterback at Virginia, calling the shots out of their run-and-gun spread attack.

It is the second straight season LCA — a private school that petitioned unsuccessfully to join the Virginia High School League — has opened against a Dogwood District opponent, after beating Dan River in Ringgold last fall, 47-23. This year’s challenge figures to be more difficult for the Bulldogs, especially without Mike Rocco, who broke his left arm and wrist in a scrimmage against Franklin County.

Gretna, meanwhile, returns its quarterback, junior Nick Miller — The Associated Press Group A player of the year as a freshman in 2007 when he led the Hawks to a 52-0 state final rout of Gate City at Salem Stadium — after he dislocated his ankle and fractured his tibia in a scrimmage at Jefferson Forest last summer.

LCA coach Frank Rocco doesn’t think playing at Williams Stadium, on FieldTurf, gives the Bulldogs any advantage on the Hawks, who won all four of their state titles on artificial surfaces.

“In some cases, it’s more of an adrenaline rush for an opposing team coming in and playing in a (Division I) stadium,” he said.

Prior to the injury to his son, Rocco had loaded the seven-time defending Virginia Independent Conference champion Bulldogs’ non-conference schedule with a series of brutal clashes.

“Going into this season, we’d gone ahead and scheduled aggressively,” he said. “Our first three games out of the gate are against teams that won state championships.”

After Gretna, LCA hosts Charlotte (N.C.) Christian and Atlantic Shores, the defending VIS Division II champions coached by former Bulldogs coach Wayne Lance, who led them to VIC titles and state runner-up finishes in 2002 and 2003.

Facing that level of competition without its No. 1 signal-caller is not an ideal situation, though Rocco’s backup, Seth Good, is prepared to lead the team after starting at the JV level the past two years.

“Losing Mike and playing without a couple linemen, too, we’ve been out of sync,” Frank Rocco said. “Gretna’s not a team you want to limp into. I don’t know if we’ve seen a team with so many weapons. Every one of their skill position guys return from last year. They’re very skilled and very fast. They have six guys who you can’t tackle with one person.”

Though the Bulldogs have a decided size advantage on the Hawks on the offensive and defensive lines, Gretna’s speed is a great equalizer.

“The speed factor is the thing we’re going to have to overcome,” Rocco said. “With their style of play, size is not even a factor. They just go with quickness and hit the gaps (on defense), so if you’ve got a couple of big guys, they run right by you and they’re so disruptive.”

Rocco said Gretna has reloaded its line after graduating Bennett Fulper (now at Maryland) and Ethan Winn (Catawba) last year.

“Knowing they lost a couple linemen last year, that was everybody’s hope they’d be a little less formidable,” he said. “But the linemen they have are good. They have five bigger-than-average kids, they’re young, sophomores and juniors and they’re all pretty darn good.”

LCA scouted Gretna’s scrimmages and knows what to expect tonight.

“We’ve seen them on tape and they’ve just really dominated GW-Danville, Halifax, big (Group AAA) schools. They got the better of Goochland,” Rocco said. “They’re just very explosive.”

Good will test the Hawks’ secondary early and often and the Bulldogs need to get plenty of production from Desmond Rice, a 1,000-plus-yard rusher last year.

“Seth (Good) has got to control the ball,” Rocco said. “Obviously, we have to block their quick blitzing defense. It’s one of those games where both teams are going to go out and get after it.”

Gretna first-year coach Kevin Saunders said winning or losing tonight’s game won’t help or hurt the Hawks’ playoff chances down the road. Since LCA is a private school, the game won’t be factored into the VHSL’s power points system. However, it should benefit both teams in preparing them for postseason play.

“We can’t count it as a win or a loss … (so) when you look at points, you kind of mess yourself up a little bit,” he said. “You’re playing a good football team, well-coached team and it should help us in the long run. I just wish there was something, a reward for playing it.”

He said Gretna is approaching the game as another scrimmage as it readies for the first of two meetings with Dan River next week.

Saunders said the Bulldogs should be favored going in.

“I think they’re probably a little better than us right now,” he said. “They’re better than us up front, and have got a lot older kids than we do. They’ve got a system they’ve been running for a while. It’s a challenge for us. I just hope we can keep it close.”

He doesn’t expect the dropoff from Rocco to Good at quarterback to be that great.

“He’s a good football player,” Saunders said of Good. “We watched him scrimmage. He’s a good athlete and he’s going to do a good job for them. You miss a quarterback like Rocco, but you replace him with a kid who could start for most people.”

Miller could give Gretna an edge, if he can play the way he did as a freshman, when he tied a VHSL record set twice before (in 1966 and 1969) by being responsible for nine touchdowns — eight passing and one running — in a game against Appomattox.

“He’s got to get a feel for things (but) he’s doing pretty good,” Saunders said. “We use him both ways — he runs the ball well and throws the ball well. Hopefully, we can do what he enables us to do.”