LEXINGTON, Va. - VMI's first camp scrimmage produced touchdown pass plays of 58 and 40 yards, but it was Mother Nature who provided the decisive strike at Thursday's controlled scrimmage at Foster Stadium.
The Keydets had scrimmaged for 25 minutes and run 28 plays before distant lightning from an approaching storm was sighted. Play was called and the teams moved to the gameday locker rooms underneath the home stands, but never returned to the playing field after an hour wait and little indication the situation would improve.
The initial scrimmage however, did produce some eye-popping plays. On the third snap from scrimmage redshirt sophomore Adam Morgan floated a ball down the right sideline that was snared in mid-air by redshirt senior wideout Tracy Hairston who then raced to the endzone for a 58-yard touchdown.
On the sixth possession of the scrimmage, redshirt freshman quarterback Tyler Tolley connected on a 40-yard touchdown pass play that was executed on a one-handed grab by freshman wide receiver Michael Mey.
The offense started fast, generating four first downs before the scrimmage was eight snaps old The defense then stiffened and did not allow a first down over the next three possessions and came up with fumble recoveries by freshman lineman Emmanuel Cooper and senior outside linebacker Emilio Calvin to halt two of the last three drives.
Morgan completed all three pass attempts for 78 yards including the TD strike to Hairston. Sophomore quarterback Eric Kordenbrock completed two of seven attempts for 16 yards but had a pair of balls dropped. Redshirt senior back Chaz Jones rushed three times for 16 yards while senior running back T.J. Talley carried twice for 15 yards.
Senior Josh Sneed topped the defensive charts with two tackles and a sack for 2 yards. Pass breakups were logged by freshman defensive backs Jon-Payne Wimbish and Justin Price.
VMI will resume practice tomorrow morning at 10 AM at the turf practice field located behind Foster Stadium. Another scrimmage is slated to be held at Foster Stadium next Thursday, August 25 at 3:00 p.m.
HEAD COACH SPARKY WOODS - "We'll just have to pick it up and adjust tomorrow. I told the team that we'll have to modify some things at the next practice because of the time limitation today. We still were able to get some good work in and got a lot of people on the field for just a 30-play scrimmage. We'll be able to do some evaluation from this. It wasn't a total loss even though we had wanted to get a few more reps."
"We learned a couple of things today including that we're not ready to play a game right now. We need the practice. We need to transfer what we do in practice to the games. We now have all the installation in, so now it's matter of turning the information into knowledge, and the knowledge into experience and skill."
"I saw some guys do some really exciting things. Tracy Hairston made a good catch and Michael Mey made a one-handed catch. Our special teams execution was good and crisp. Jeff Sexton was standing tall and confident at kicker and it was good to have Clark Irvine back at snapper after being at Oxford."
