South Lakes Looking To Make It All Make Sense in Matchup With Chantilly

By BRIAN McNICOLL

No matter what happens on Friday night at 7, when Chantilly High visits South Lakes for a Concorde District contest, some of the prior results won’t make sense.

South Lakes now stands at 4-2 overall and 1-0 in the district after defeating Oakton, 24-21, last Friday for its league victory since 2023. The Seahawks have one “good” loss – falling 20-16 at state contender Battlefield on a kickoff return TD in the game’s final seconds. They also have one “bad” loss, a 23-20 setback at Herndon in a game decided by a 49-yard field goal with six seconds remaining.

Chantilly stands at 3-3 overall, 0-1 in the Concorde, after getting blown out, 53-7, by Centreville last week. But the Chargers beat Herndon, 18-6, earlier in the season, and their losses are to teams .500 and above.

So does Chantilly have the edge based on its better performance against Herndon? Or do the Seahawks, who have beaten Oakton, Robinson, Yorktown and West Potomac, actually have a better resume?

Seahawks Coach Jason Hescock says the game that doesn’t make sense is South Lakes’ loss at Herndon. “We didn’t play our brand of football that day,” he said. “We had some really good drives that stalled in the red zone. We didn’t have a good game at all.

“It could be the schedule … playing on Saturday. But if you make the playoffs, guess what … you play on Saturday. Could have been overconfidence. Those teenage brains can start to slide to some bad places when they’re looking at records and so forth. Maybe we didn’t respect our opponent.”

That should not be a problem on Friday night. Last year, Chantilly’s Charlie Boucher scored on the last play of the game from a yard out to give the Chargers a 30-28 victory. South Lakes had erased a 21-7 deficit earlier, in part thanks to an onside kick recovery and a school-record 98-yard touchdown pass to Nick Picarelli.

But the Chargers roared back in the final 2:20 to close it out. They got to the South Lakes 4 on a a 23-yard pass with a 15-yard penalty tacked on. Boucher ran it to the one. The Chargers called timeout with six seconds left, and he scored on the next play.

Boucher graduated, but his replacement at running back, James Marion, a 190-pound senior – is “fast, tough and physical,” Hescock said. “You don’t see him put it on the ground. He’s not as big, but he can really go.”

The Chargers had to abandon their game plan fairly early in the lopsided loss to Centerville, but Marion still gave the team more yards (75) than its entire passing game (61). Chantilly’s defense allowed Centreville’s top back to gain 141 yards on just 14 carries and its quarterback to throw for 241 yards and three touchdowns.

Hescock doesn’t necessarily expect a 7-6 type of game, but he does expect a slugfest that will turn on the performance of the guys in the trenches. “Our offensive line has got to have a good game,” he said. “We are healthy across the board – as healthy as we’ve been all season. There’s nothing holding us back. We just have to perform.”

On defense, again the line will determine the outcome. “They have a really good quarterback who can sling it and a running back who can go, so we have to neutralize them at the line of scrimmage and not let them get started.”

It also would be nice if the offense started to produce sooner in the game, Hescock said. South Lakes barely moved the ball in the first half against Oakton last week and wound up trailing 8-3 in a game it eventually won. The Seahawks have scored more than one touchdown in the first half in just one game this year – the three-touchdown second quarter outburst at Robinson.

“Our defense did a good job of holding Oakton down until the offense could get going,” Hescock said. “This week the offense needs to get going sooner.”

That will come down to senior running back Dalton Blakeney, who has 542 yards rushing and 10 total touchdowns, and junior quarterback Christian Wyatt, who drove the team downfield to victory last week with two key pass competitions to emerging sophomore wideout Josh Dagby and two big runs in the red zone.

“We’re getting in these situations and the key is to make the most of it, and that’s what we did,” Wyatt said after the last victory.

The Seahawks are in a situation on Friday. Chantilly has lost three straight – the last one badly – but the Chargers took care of Herndon, and the Seahawks didn’t. On the other hand, South Lakes almost beat Battlefield and has logged four other tough victories.

Which game doesn’t make sense? We’ll find out Friday night.