Lacrosse seniors say goodbye
ROBBY FLETCHER Sports Editor
Powhatan girls lacrosse has become a behemoth program the past few seasons, growing steadily in popularity with high turnout numbers for tryouts, a winning resume featuring two straight state tournament appearances and players earning college interest to continue playing the game outside of high school.
There are arguably too many people to count that deserve credit for that rise in program popularity, but a good place to start may be with this year’s senior class.
Taylor Fitzsimmons, Sam Flippo, Hunter King, Sophia Payne, Kate Adams and Carly Rehme have formed the backbone of the team, which recently finished o its season with a 13-5 record and a spot in the state quarterfinals.
Flippo, Payne and Adams have been with the team for their entire high school careers, forming the core of leaders that a talented group of underclassmen learned under.
After the season ended with a loss to Rockbridge County, it was a bittersweet feeling for the seniors, who had hopes of getting farther than the quarterfinals. It’s not easy having so much on the line in what could your final game, but not long after the loss, five of the seniors were given a chance to represent their school and share the field together one last time with a late invite to the annual senior classic held at Randolph-Macon’s Frank Day Field.
With a running clock and a collection of the top seniors from around the area, it was a shared experience of saying goodbye to this chapter in their lives, and it acted as a more fitting sendo for a senior class that hoped to have a little more time on the field with their Powhatan gear on.
“I think after last game, this kind of ended things on a happy note,” Flippo said. “You just remember why you play lacrosse when you’re with your best friends and you’re just playing. It’s a reminder that we’re just kids playing the game.”
The feeling was mutual for Adams, who was also a field hockey standout at Powhatan. The chance to play the senior game may have come as a late surprise, but it was the exact kind of thing the seniors
needed to give a proper farewell to the program they helped shape into what it is today.
“It just feels so nice to be able to come back out with your best friends to play again,” Adams said after the senior classic. “Even though you lose such an important game, you get to just come out here and have fun and not worry about the score.”
When we talk about the point the team truly became a regional powerhouse, the girls generally look to the beginning of the 2021-22 season. Finally removed from the many obstacles the pandemic threw their way, the team’s practices grew closer to normal, which meant more time was dedicated to teammates getting to establish
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Dabhade’s journey to the final, and later a state championship after beating Grafton’s Rainer Christiansen on June 10, was a year-long redemption arc after he fell in last year’s state final to Powhatan star Jacob Pfab, who ended his high school tennis career with a long sought after gold medal.
This time, it was Pfab’s doubles running mate Jamison Wallace who stood in the way. After being an overqualified No. 2 on last year’s team, Wallace came out in his second season and looked even better as the team’s undisputed top singles player. Wallace’s quick feet, lethal serve and superior conditioning on prolonged rallies made the reality of a second Powhatan Indian to claim the Class 4 title a very real possibility.
It hasn’t always been easy for the sophomore though, who said it took a few bumps in the road like his two losses to Cosby’s Joseph Braud for him to realize that more work was needed to reach his championship aspirations.
“I was probably projected to win those and I lost both of them, and it opened my eyes to really help me improve,” Wallace said. “It drove me to improve for regionals, and that’s the reason why I’m here today.”
Those improvements were evident when he reached the Class 4, Region B singles tournament, which he entered with a 13-3 record and finished with four more wins, including victories over last year’s regional runner-up Will Hart from Hanover and Courtland transfer and 2023 regional runner-up Keldibek Khozoev.
It was the second year in a row that Wallace was a region champion, with last year’s title coming alongside Pfab in doubles after he won his last singles tournament.
All that led to a battle against Dabhade, which started o in Wallace’s favor after he took a 5-2 lead in the first set. Wallace was certainly familiar with Dabhade due to last season’s connection, but as far as planning for the matchup, much of it had to be learned on the fly.
SPORTS WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14, 2023 | Powhatan, Virginia | SECTION B
Sophia Payne was one of five seniors to be invited to the annual girls lacrosse senior classic held at Randolph-Macon’s Day Field.
AROUND THE REGION
Senior defender Taylor Fitzsimmons has been with the Indians lacrosse team since her sophomore year.
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Indians soccer stars earn All-Region honors
ROBBY FLETCHER
Sports Editor
Some of Powhatan’s top performers on the soccer pitch were awarded some due recognition after the season.
Three Indians soccer players earned 4B All-Region honors last week, with senior team captains Fischer Daniel and Connor Nickerson making it along with talented freshman Dylan Mapes.
Daniel was the only one of the three to make it on the first team after leading the team in
goals in his final year as an Indian. The soon-to-be Lynchburg Hornet has been a constant presence on postseason best-of lists, also making it on last year’s All-Metro, All-State and All-Region teams. He’ll likely be featured on the 2023 All-Metro and All-State lists as well after following up a breakout junior year with another excellent demonstration of his creative scoring abilities. Nickerson and Mapes made the second team this season,
ended, it marked a road for the rising upperclassmen to follow as they become the new leaders that everyone turns to.
marking the second time Nickerson has earned the honor. The midfielder took over increased responsibility in his final high school season, playing all over the field and working in tandem with the defense and the midfield to help the Indians to an 8-9 record this year. Nickerson recently signed his letter of intent to play soccer collegiately at Richard Bland College. Mapes emerged as an impactful newcomer for the team this year,
earning his way on the field with blazing speed that blended well with the team’s pace up top, along with the skills to score and dish out accurate passes in the 18-yard box. After impressing enough in his first year of varsity play with a second team All-Region feature, Mapes is being looked at as a fast-rising skill player that will follow in the footsteps of Powhatan’s recent stars that have ended their time with the program as a go-to scoring option and team leader.
Last season, the Indians had seven players make an All-Region Team while head coach Willie Miles was also named coach of the year. That list featured Parker Sloan, Colton Hiatt, Carter Hubley, Tucker Thomas and Brayden Elzey. With all spring sports seasons finished up, more player accolades will follow for Powhatan’s top athletes.
Robby Fletcher can be reached at rfletcher@powhatantoday.com.
an on-field rapport.
The amount of interest shown during o season conditioning was a reflection of the team’s rising popularity. Many of the girls on the team were multi-sport athletes, who developed chemistry through their time in fall and winter sports that carried over into one massive athletic melting pot that featured an array of talented student-athletes.
“We all play multiple sports so I think our first two years was the foundations building and once all of our friends joined we just really came together,” Payne said.
Fitzsimmons and Rehme joined the team their sophomore year, the same year that the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted all sports seasons across the country. It made chemistry-building tough with a shortened season and limited practice time together, but once the team got together last year, it all started to click with the group’s core players. From there, the wins started to follow.
“Last year was when we really turned up and we finally clicked and beat a lot of teams we never thought we’d beat,” Rehme said. “That just followed into this year, and we continued o that chemistry from last year to make it so much stronger.”
After having only two seniors last season, it made this year’s o season an eager one for a roster that featured players with a winnow mentality and the confidence that they can get to where they want to be in the postseason.
While this team made it to the same spot last year’s season
“I think we’re leaving it way better than we got left, I know the sophomore class is really, really strong,” Flippo said.
That sophomore class features players like Caroline Camp, Erica Krauss, Mackenzie Halfon and Chloe Holt, all of whom were instrumental to this year’s success.
Midfielder Grace Hayden and defender Katherine Cerullo will be the team’s lone seniors, and many of this year’s graduating class have already tabbed Hayden as someone that’s more than qualified to carry the torch and lead the way.
Fitzsimmons says it’s hard to replicate the chemistry that this team displayed over the years, but it’s even harder to let it go, though there’s trust that the team will continue on with its winning tradition next year.
“I’m excited, but at the same time sad to leave the younger girls because we have such close bonds with them,” Fitzsimmons said. “Our team is so connected, we have such good chemistry so it’s hard to leave that behind.”
Flippo is the only senior with plans to continue playing the game at the college level after she committed to High Point University, but other players like Fitzsimmons and Rehme still intend to play at the club or intramural level down the line.
Regardless of where they end up, there will always be the memories of a program that they had a hand in helping become a powerhouse out of the district.
Robby Fletcher can be reached at rfletcher@powhatantoday.com.
It appeared Wallace had him figured out after dropping the first two games of the set. In the third game, Wallace took every point for his first win, then won a tight fourth game to tie up the set 2-2. It was the start of a fivegame streak where the Powhatan star came away victorious, but Dabhade all of a sudden cleaned up his serving errors, locked in and made things interesting with two straight wins of his own, making the 10th game an important one for Wallace to maintain the momentum he created with his five straight wins.
The game didn’t start too well, with a double fault on Wallace giving Dabhade an early lead, but he cleaned up his serve and got it to 40-15, where he finished the job and won the first set.
The first game of the second set also got to 40-15 and went in Wallace’s favor, and it appeared Dabhade may have used up all his energy to claw back into the first set.
The next game, Jamison served and won a very hard-fought opening point where he had to charge to the front of the net and save what looked like an easy point for his opponent, who was
taken by surprise by Wallace’s quickness to the ball and ultimately overshot his stroke. All of sudden, just like late in the first set, Dabhade’s fire lit back up though. He not only took that second game, but the next four as well.
Wallace did everything he could to respond to the heat of Dabhade’s fiery shots, but the Lightridge senior looked in complete control, picking his spots on the court to force Wallace to sprint back and forth just to keep the game alive. Wallace had seen and heard from Pfab about what kind of player Dabhade was, but no preparation could prepare him for the level his opponent was playing at with a state championship appearance on the line.
“Jacob told me some stu , but most of it I had to figure out myself,” he said. “The first set, he was missing everything so I was just trying to keep the ball deep and force some errors, but in the second set and the tiebreaker he was just hitting winners left and right.”
Wallace kept the set alive with wins in the sixth and seventh games, winning the seventh game with a comeback from 30-0 and earning the winning point on a tough rally that ended with him placing a shot perfectly into the right corner, but Dabhade calmly
settled in and won the eighth game to set up the tiebreaker. The momentum of the second set proved vital for Dabhade, who didn’t miss a beat and took the first two points. A blistering serve from Wallace made it 2-1 soon after, but like the second set, Dabhade began picking the spot he wanted Wallace to chase the ball to, and that control led to five straight points for a 7-1 lead.
With his season on life support, Wallace gave all he had left and won the next two points, but with a match point at 9-4, Dabhade finished the job and moved on to the final round of the tournament.
Wallace was quick to bounce back up from the loss, giving credit to his opponent’s excellence while acknowledging his own improvement from the beginning of the season compared to now.
“I feel like I improved a lot from the beginning of the season,” Wallace said.
Wallace says there’ll be a small window for rest with his second season in the books, but the grind to prepare for Year 3 will pickup soon as he looks ahead to another season where he shoots for a state title.
B2 | WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14, 2023 POWHATAN TODAY
PHOTO BY ROBBY FLETCHER Jamison Wallace hits a backhand shot against Lightridge’s Sid Dabhade in the second set of their state semifinals clash.
SPORTS
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Powhatan’s senior class helped elevate the program to back-to-back state tournament appearances.
PHOTO BY ROBBY FLETCHER
Powhatan soccer players Fischer Daniel (18), Dylan Mapes (19) and Connor Nickerson (24) were featured on this year’s 4B All-Region Team.
PHOTO BY ROBBY FLETCHER
PHOTO BY KIRK WHITING
Robby Fletcher can be reached at rfletcher@powhatantoday.com.
Lacrosse From B1
Wallace From B1
NOTICEOFPUBLICHEARINGS
POWHATANCOUNTYBOARDOFSUPERVISORS
NoticeisherebygiventhatthePowhatanCountyBoardof Supervisorswillconductpublichearingson Monday,June26,2023 at6:30PM inthe PowhatanCountyVillageBuildingAuditorium (3910OldBuckinghamRoad) regardingthefollowingmatters.
O-2023-06: The CountyofPowhatan requestsrati cationofthe emergencyOrdinanceextendingtheduedatefor rsthalftaxes for2023fromJune5,2023,toJune20,2023,withnointerestor penalty;andthatpenaltiesshallbecalculated retroactivetothedue dateofJune5,2023,andshouldbeeffectiveforpaymentsmade afterJune20,2023;interestshallbecalculatedonpaymentsmade afterJune30,2023,shouldpaymentofthetaxesnotoccurbythe extendedduedate.
O-2023-07 (Case #23-05-REZ):Jesse(District#2:Powhatan Station/Graceland) requests arezoningoftheparcellocatedatTM #41A-1-B-6fromResidentialUtility(R-U)toCommerceCenter(CC). Theparcelislocatedapproximately0.83mileswestoftheintersection betweenAndersonHighway(Rt.60)andStavemillRoad.Ifapproved theapplicantintendstousetheexistingstructureonthepropertyasan of cebuilding.The2021ComprehensivePlandesignatesthesubject propertiesasGatewayBusinessontheCountywideLandUseMap.
Membersofthepublicarewelcometoattend in-personorparticipate remotelybyjoining awebinarat: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83998792911orbydialinginbyphone at1-929-205-6099OR1-312-626-6799;thentypinginthewebinar ID83998792911.Duringthepubliccommentperiod,participants mayraisetheirhandusingthezoomcontrolsonthecomputer screen,or(ifdialingin)bypressing*9on aphone. Publiccommentsmayalsobesubmittedto administration@powhatanva.govorbyleaving avoicemailat (804)598-5612.Anycomments receivedpriorto5:00PMofthe dateofthepublichearingwillbe recordedinthemeetingminutes. Allinterestedpersonsareinvitedtoparticipateinthepublichearings andtopresenttheirviewsand/ortosubmitwrittencomments.
Persons requiringspecialassistancetovieworparticipateinthe hearingshouldcontactthePowhatanCountyAdministrator’s Of ceat (804)598-5612atleastthreedayspriortothemeeting. Fulltextanddocuments relatedtothisproposalcanbe reviewedbycontactingtheCountyAdministrator’sOf ce atadministration@powhatanva.govor(804)598-5612.
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