Fight to The End: Louisa falls to William Fleming

Jayden Seaberry runs for Louisa County against William Fleming. Photo courtesy Andrew Woolfolk

By Bart Isley / Scrimmage Play Publisher

Louisa appeared to be all but dead Friday night, but a holding call opened the door ever so slightly. 

Isaiah Holland kicked it in, breaking through for a punt block with a little more than a minute to play and Jayden Seaberry pounced, picking it up before being tackled into the endzone by a William Fleming player. 

Suddenly, with 1:11 left, Louisa was down just 27-26, and the classic football rule says go for two on the road. Louisa went for it, but came up just short and fell 27-26 in the Region 5C semifinals. 

“I’d go for it 100 more times,” said Louisa coach Will Patrick. “We had a chance to go win the football game and we knew what we wanted to run.”

On the two-point conversion try, 10 William Fleming football defenders headed left. One wasn’t fooled though, senior K-Ron Furguson. After a banged up Dyzier Carter – who like classmate Savion Hiter who was fighting through an injury all week to be able to play – made the right read and sprinted left, Furguson followed, forcing Carter to stretch his run out all the way to the pylon. Furguson simply kept coming, kept forcing it toward the sideline and despite a heroic effort from Carter and a stretch near the goal line, Louisa couldn’t convert.

“They didn’t practice all week,” Patrick said about Carter and Hiter. “They were awesome, everybody was awesome, the o-line, everybody. They sold out for this team.”

The second round of the region playoffs have become a nightmare factory in some ways for Louisa in the last seven years with a 19-14 loss on an insane finish to Eastern View in 2018, a 16-15 loss to Patrick Henry in 2019, losses to Salem in 2021 and 2022. But this one was a little different, as a lot of people across the state didn’t give the Lions much of a chance to knock off the Colonels, who opened the season with a 90-0 win and who had only surrendered more than 14 points twice all season. 

“We knew we had a challenge coming down here,” Patrick said. “That’s a really good team. We’re going to get over this hump.”

The Lions came out looking more like the dominant team in this one, with Hiter fighting through the ankle injury to rip off a 53-yard touchdown to stake the Lions to a 7-0 lead, then a 12-yard touchdown to make it 14-0 Louisa late in the first quarter. With the Lions’ defense playing lights out the entire first half even without Hiter and Carter on that side of the ball, Louisa was in the driver’s seat at the half up 20-6, with two George Albertson field goals tacked on. 

That defense was strong throughout the game except for a drive to start the second half where two long runs by Malachi Coleman pulled the Colonels within seven points. The unit held the explosive Colonels to just 285 yards of offense. 

A brutal moment in the early fourth quarter though came seconds after a fourth down conversion when Louisa’s Latraveall Creasy – who’d powered ahead for the conversion a play before – fumbled near midfield and Fleming’s Kamharie Steelman’s scooped and scored from 43 yards out, giving the Colonels a 27-20 lead.

Louisa responded though, driving inside the redzone before getting stuffed on fourth down in what appeared to be the end, especially after Coleman picked up a first down for Fleming. But Holland, who’d also caught two huge passes from Caleb Brady and picked off a ball in the first half, broke through the line and gave Louisa life. 

“They’re double covering Dyzier, rolling the safety over to him and Isaiah made some big catches and played his ass off,” Patrick said.

Seaberry picking the loose ball up to put Louisa back into it was fitting, a senior who’s role changed with Hiter’s return from Woodberry early this season. 

“The ultimate team player, playing hard as hell,” Patrick said. “He left it all on the field.”

Hiter finished with 156 yards on 25 carries while Brady went 8-for-11 for 111 yards and provided a dash of a run threat with five carries for 23 yards. Creasy had six carries for 42 yards. 

The loss ends the run for a senior class that includes Holland, Albertson, Braden McIntire, Amir Guthrie, Gavin Anderson, Luke Rowan, Brady and Seaberry that went 38-9 in four years of high school football and proved they could fight back from adversity with this year’s 0-2 start turning into another playoff appearance. 

“I can name them all (the seniors),” Patrick said before listing all 14 of them. “They were on that team last year that was a total rebuild. We were reeling early this year, we hadn’t been 0-2 in a long time and we had to figure out what worked and who and who didn’t work. This team turned it around and ripped off nine wins in a row.”