Warriors' Boyd is making an impact

By Jeremy Stafford - jstafford@nvdaily.com

STEPHENS CITY -- Perhaps you've heard of Dalton Boyd; perhaps you haven't.

He certainly isn't an intimidating figure, nor is he an imposing one. Pre-snap, Boyd isn't a sore thumb the way his Sherando counterparts are: He isn't as tall as Nick Bakos, he isn't as brawny as Baxter Newman. But Boyd is sharp as a knife and, once that ball is snapped, it all comes rushing to you, and you realize you have heard of Dalton Boyd.

Boyd is quick as a whistle, and on Friday nights, he shimmers from head to toe in Sherando black and red. He's that streak of a shadow you saw return a kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown at James Wood, and that fleet-footed whisper you saw take a Jalen Brisco pass 81 yards for a score against Jefferson County.

For Sherando coach Bill Hall, Boyd's success this season didn't come from nowhere -- it was completely expected.

"He's got great athleticism, he's got really great speed," Hall explained. "I think when you combine those things, along with the fact that he's put in the time necessary so he could be successful, he's worked hard all offseason ... and it's been a four-year process for him."

Well, to be precise, it's been a three-year effort for Boyd to excel as a wide receiver. Before he moved to wide receiver, Boyd was a quarterback at Robert E. Aylor Middle School, as well as on the Sherando freshman team. Before that, he was a tailback on his youth football team, the Packers. He even played a bit as a guard.

As a seventh-grader, Boyd began a regimen of agility training, honing his zigs and his zags with cone and ladder drills. He focused mostly on quarterback-specific drills before he switched to wide receiver as a sophomore at Sherando. With Ross Metheny, now a red-shirt freshman at the University of Virginia, starting at quarterback, Boyd had to switch positions if he was going to see the field before his senior year.

He continued with his agility training, traveling to Heritage High School in Leesburg, dashing between cones, high-stepping between ladder rungs, and he concentrated more toward running precise routes. In his junior season, Boyd was Metheny's second option at wide receiver, behind senior Derrick Dehaney. Boyd caught 24 passes for 481 yards last season, and, disappointingly, Sherando failed to make the playoffs.

There's no single reason why Sherando missed the playoffs last season, despite returning a heavy core of the team that played in the Group AA Division 4 state championship game in 2007. Certainly the torn anterior cruciate ligament Metheny suffered was a major contributor, but many players this season point to a less reason less concrete: A lack of senior leadership.

"We have goals that we write down before the season starts, so that was something that coach Hall and all the seniors stressed [this season]," Boyd said. "That the seniors need to take control of the team and be better leaders and kinda pull the younger guys in more than last year."

To show for their rediscovered team unity, the Warriors have a 9-2 record, having barely lost to Loudoun County and Handley, and will play defending state champion Broad Run on Friday in the Group AA Region II, Division 4 final.

"Not many people gave us a shot this year," Boyd said. "But all the seniors are real close and we kinda got together and we knew what we wanted to do.

"We take the younger guys under our wing and show them around."

And then there's the personal responsibility Boyd shouldered this past offseason. Boyd bypassed playing baseball last spring -- though he will be the first to chuckle that he's not a great baseball player to begin with -- and took to the weight room instead. He put on size and increased his speed. In the summer he went to football camps at Boston College, James Madison University, the University of Richmond and U.Va. And when the college coaches Boyd worked with got in touch with Hall, it seemed Boyd impressed them all with how efficiently he ran.

"One common thread that I heard back from them is, 'Boy, he's a great route-runner,'" Hall said. "And so I think that speaks highly of his focus to things that we've been trying to instill in him.

"He knows if you couple those fundamentals along with his athleticism, it's a good combination for him to be explosive."

Boyd has 27 receptions for 627 yards this season, and has seven receiving touchdowns. He's returned two kickoffs for touchdowns, and is the only Warrior to average more than 100 all-purpose yards per game.

And while Sherando is a team which prides itself on its defense, Friday's game against Broad Run -- a team that features University of Pittsburgh-bound tailback T.J. Peeler and Syracuse University-bound wideout Adrian Flemming -- will depend on how consistent the Sherando offense can play. Putting together long, time-consuming drives will keep Peeler and Flemming on the bench, and out of a groove.

After scoring on their its two possessions in a win over James Wood last Friday in the regional semifinals, Sherando knows it can string together scoring drives, it's just a matter doing it again and again.

"I think if our offense puts four quarters together, we'll be able to score some," Boyd said. "If our offense could just be more consistent, I think we've got a good shot.

Then Boyd, the wide receiver you know you've heard of, slipped a slight smile: "It's gonna be wild on Friday."