LYNCHBURG — By mid-December last year, the Lake Taylor High football team had turned in its uniforms and started a long, soul-searching offseason after a three-win campaign — coach Hank Sawyer’s first sub-.500 finish in 20 years.
On Saturday night, many of the Titans who endured that head-shaking pain celebrated the program’s fourth state championship and jubilantly dumped ice water on Sawyer.
Quarterback Kevin Adams threw a 26-yard touchdown pass to tight end Casaun Hesson in the second overtime to lift the Titans to a scintillating 48-42 victory over Kettle Run in the Virginia High School League’s Class 3 state championship game at Liberty University’s Williams Stadium.
Lake Taylor (13-2) finished a remarkable turnaround by outlasting Kettle Run, of Fauquier County, in a back-and-forth battle full of big plays and methodical marches deserving of overtime.
Kettle Run (13-2) made its third state title-game appearance since 2022 in a bid for the program’s first state championship.
In the end, the Titans made one more play that mattered and added to the program’s state championships of 2012, 2014 and 2019 — all under Sawyer.
“It hurt, it hurt real bad,” Adams said of last season. “Coach Sawyer said we got to get it together, and we got it together. We did what we were supposed to do, paid attention in practice, listened to our coach. He never told us anything wrong.”
The victory gave Sawyer 250 victories over 27 seasons, and few could have measured up to a game Saturday that featured 13 touchdowns, two overtime periods and more than 600 yards of total offense — 313 for Lake Taylor, 305 for Kettle Run.
Sawyer made it to the postgame interview room in a dry warmup suit with 196 text messages from well-wishers.
Last season “was very challenging,” Sawyer said. “We were all kind of heartbroken. … It just hurt, and people around the school didn’t have a lot of faith in you, and a lot of these guys’ peers were down on them.”
Tied 34-34 after regulation, both teams scored a touchdown and two-point conversions in the first overtime period. Kettle Run went nowhere on its possession from the 10-yard line to start the second OT. Lake Taylor’s Lataveon Hill registered a sack on third down and Adams, also a defensive back, intercepted a fourth-down pass.
Lake Taylor celebrates after winning the VHSL Class 3 State Football Championship over Kettle Run on Saturday at Liberty University. (Jeremy Hopkins/For The Virginian-Pilot)
A bad pitch on the Titans’ first play of their second OT possession put the ball on the 26-yard line, but on second down Adams faked a handoff to Keon Johnson and saw Hesson streaking across the middle. Hesson caught the ball in stride and beat two defenders to the end zone to win it.
“We made a good call and we just executed it,” Hesson said.
The Cougars led 21-20 after a first half full of big plays for both teams.
Lake Taylor took an early lead on Devaughn Powell’s 59-yard interception return for a touchdown, and Jeremiah Ferebee’s 53-yard burst up the middle put the Titans in front 12-0 with 4:25 left in the first quarter.
But Kettle Run used two touchdown passes by Dycen Tapscott — an 11-yarder to Zach Roth and 76-yarder to Bray Jenkins — to pull ahead 14-12 less than two minutes into the second quarter.
The lone sustained drive of the opening half was Lake Taylor’s 13-play, 59-yard march, capped by Johnson’s 1-yard plunge with 2:34 left. The Cougars, though, got a 56-yard kickoff return from Colton Lubbe, and needed just two plays for Tapscott to hit Roth for a 22-yard TD pass for a 21-20 lead at the break.
The second half featured more sustained drives, including 11- and 13-play marches for Kettle Run and a 13-play drive for the Titans.
Adams finished with 129 rushing yards and a score and was 4 of 8 for 81 yards and a TD passing, while Johnson added 89 yards and three touchdowns. Tapscott finished 13 of 26 for 238 yards and five touchdowns — three to Roth — and two interceptions.
Both teams missed extra points, and Kettle Run’s Timmy Furness missed wide left on a 36-yard field-goal try as time expired in regulation.
“I just told them to keep playing,” Sawyer said. “Our battle cry was ’48 minutes to win it, or a lifetime to think about it.’ Just keep playing.”
A few more than 48 minutes, and the Titans were state champions.
