South Lakes Visits Westfield In Second Round Of Playoffs

By BRIAN McNICOLL

Last week, the South Lakes High football team played Yorktown for the second time this season and with a similar result. Both games came down to the last play with South Lakes escaping with a pair of narrow victories.

On Friday night at 7, the Seahawks will play Westfield for the second time this season, but the stakes will be far higher and the hope is for dramatically different results.

When the Seahawks, now 6-5, met Westfield, 8-3, two weeks ago in the regular-season finale, basically nothing was at stake. South Lakes was locked in as the No.4 seed from the Concorde District, and Westfield was locked in as No. 2.

The Seahawks even pulled the plug somewhat personnel-wise that night with reserves playing on both lines and even at quarterback, where the JV and freshman starting signal callers both got the chance to throw a pass for the only time all season.

The result was a dominating 40-13 victory for Westfield, in which the Bulldogs outgained the Seahawks 416-266. Malachi Lee, who scored four touchdowns against South Lakes last year as a freshman, added two more as a sophomore on touchdown passes of 63 and five yards from veteran quarterback Ryan Carlson.

The Seahawks’ hopes for a different ending rest on a number of factors. For one, after the first Westfield game, South Lakes quarterback Christian Wyatt said that if nothing else, this game would “get us to practice much, much harder.”

A number of players remarked after the Yorktown victory last week that that was precisely what happened – the most intense week of practice all year, followed by a physical victory over a bigger team. “It was more intensity, more physicality all week, and it really made a difference in how we played,” said senior defensive lineman Jonathan Vasquez-Maldonado.

It also won’t be as easy for Westfield to keep South Lakes’ passing game under wraps this time around. Junior receiver Nick Picarelli had eight catches in that game for 58 yards, but 30 came on one catch. “They had him bottled up – two guys, three guys on Nick wherever he went,” said South Lakes Coach Jason Hescock. “They were determined he wasn’t going to beat them.”

This time around, junior receiver Henry Strickland is healthy and ready to take part – he has been sick over the last week. Junior receiver George Zarechnak is breaking through with multiple catches every week, and tight end Nate Zschunke, a senior, has had a great two weeks of practice, Hescock said.

Some Seahawks have stepped up on the defensive side as well. Sebastian Valencia “has really cleaned up some stuff and is really firing,” Hescock said. Lucien Cheng has been among the leading tacklers the last month. Junior linebacker Collin Wall “has become a real good blue collar guy for us … always in the right place.”

Senior defensive back Eric Kowalczyk was the hero of the Yorktown victory. He both forced a fumble shortly before halftime that turned the tide of the game and batted down a pass in the end zone on the game’s last play in South Lakes’ 24-7 victory.

“I’m really going to miss Eric when he’s gone,” Hescock said. “I’m hoping that’s not till mid-December (after the state championship game), but whenever it is …. He’s just been such a smart guy and great leader helping line up everyone else on defense. On the final play against Yorktown, he was covering for someone else who went the wrong way. He’s everything we want a South Lakes Seahawk to be.”

The goal for Friday will be “to keep an eye on No.1 (Lee) and make them happy with 2-3 yards per carry when they run the ball,” said Hescock.

That’s not easy. Westfield piled up 248 yards rushing against the Seahawks, the most by an opponent all season, in the earlier game. PJ Sutherland, who had 114 against South Lakes two weeks ago, had a career-high 186 in the Bulldogs’ 56-28 victory over Washington-Liberty in the first round of the playoffs.

Lee not only had four catches for 56 yards last week against W-L, he also had two interceptions. Wesley Flamer, the Bulldogs’ star junior linebacker, had 18 tackles against W-L.

“We have to know where [Flamer] is every step of the way on offense,” Hescock said. “He’s hard to get away from.”

Hescock said he expected a playoff football-type game. Yards not easy to come by; points even harder. “The little minutiae becoming really really important. Staying connected. Controlling your gap. Sticking to your details.”

But there’s another factor, and it’s harder to quantify. But Hescock said it’s evident to him. “Sometimes these things take longer than others, but I think things have just clicked for a lot of people here lately,” the coach said. “People are staying on blocks longer, looking for more work to do during plays, being more aware of what their job is and how to do it.”

Beyond that, Hescock has another reason to hope for victory -- he's never been beyond this round of the playoffs as a head or assistant coach. He's made the playoffs four of the seven seasons he's been at South Lakes, and he's won the district twice. But he's never won more than one playoff game in a season, even going back to his days as an assistant at West Potomac.

"I just want to play in a region final ... just to see how we would do." Hopefully for Seahawks fans, he's about to get to find out.