Price Lays 281 On Buffalo Gap

ELKTON – It’s hardly a secret that East Rockingham High School’s football team relies on two primary offensive weapons: tailback Sharif Price and deep-threat wide receiver John Wright. So when Wright wasn’t on the sideline for Friday’s game against Buffalo Gap, Bison coach Andy Cline figured he could load the box to stop Price.

He did. It didn’t matter.

Price broke his own school record with 281 rushing yards on 24 carries, scoring all five East Rockingham touchdowns in the Eagles’ 35-6 win over Buffalo Gap.

The senior needed 166 rushing yards Friday to reach 1,000 for the season; he was already there by the seven-minute mark of the second quarter after a 19-yard run on a fake punt. He reached 230 to break the rushing-yards record for the third-year school on his fourth touchdown, a 29-yarder that made it 28-0 with 3:36 left in the third quarter. (Price’s old record: 206 against Luray on Sept. 30, 2011.)

“I’ll be honest with you – I didn’t even know how many [yards Price] had. I don’t really care,” said ERHS coach Donnie Coleman, who wouldn’t allow his players to speak with the media at game’s end. “But if he runs the ball – that’s what I tell these guys, if they run it and you can get yardage, you’re going to keep getting it.”

Coleman also said he couldn’t comment on Wright’s absence other than saying it was an internal issue to the team.

“It’s funny – we worked all week to try to take him [Wright] away, and I guess in a way we did,” Buffalo Gap coach Andy Cline said with a laugh. “But we did load the box a little bit, and it didn’t really matter. They ran through us.”

Especially in the first quarter.

Nine of the first 10 plays were running plays by Price, which went for 94 yards. Price also completed a 20-yard pass on a trick play on third-and-18 and caught a 5-yard pass. His first three touchdowns all came in the first quarter.

He helped lift both the Eagles’ offense and their spirits after they were blown away a week earlier in a 41-13 loss to Wilson Memorial, snapping their five-game winning streak to open the season. Price had just 51 yards rushing in that one.

But Coleman said his players had a short memory.

“To be honest with you, they took it a whole lot better than I did, and the coaches,” Coleman said. “They came out Monday and they went to work. We put it behind us. We watched the film on Monday and we didn’t say another word about it the rest of the week.”

Gap’s offense didn’t help much. Aside from senior reserve running back Matthew Barbour’s 87-yard touchdown late in the fourth quarter – Gap’s only score of the game – the Bison gained just 125 yards of offense. Junior running back Lucas Vetter carried the bulk of the load, gaining 97 rushing yards, but he needed 27 carries to do it.

“We are young. We’ve improved – it’s kind of hard tonight to see that,” Cline said. “But we have improved, and we’re going to get better.

“…I thought we would do a little bit better than that [against Price], but we just didn’t.”