By Craig Juer -- Daily Staff Writer

STRASBURG — For the second year in a row, Strasburg is going with an unassuming, unimposing sophomore at the quarterback position.

A year ago, the precocious Bub McKelvey inherited the job from Kirby Keller before the season started. This season, McKelvey has a louder voice in the locker room, a year's worth of experience and a bit more size under center. He also has a torn labrum in his throwing shoulder.

"I'm not positive, though," said McKelvey, who will receive his final diagnosis at a doctor's appointment today. "That's what they think."

As McKelvey moves over to wide receiver and defensive back (unless his injury, which he said he sustained being tackled at Central on Sept. 5, requires immediate surgery), sophomore Michael Reynolds assumes the full-time quarterbacking duties. Like McKelvey a year ago, Reynolds' public persona is shy to a fault and maintains complete adherence to the company line in all matters. But more importantly, like McKelvey's 4-0 start, Reynolds has delivered results early.

After a shaky debut against Skyline, a 35-0 loss, Reynolds regrouped and led the Rams to a 19-14 win over Page County last Friday, in which he nickel-and-dimed the Panthers all evening before gashing them with a 66-yard fourth-quarter pass to Will Orndorff to set up the Rams' winning touchdown.

"We just completed a lot of short passes," said Strasburg coach Mark Roller, who seemed more at ease at practice Wednesday after notching his first win as coach of the Rams. "They were blitzing their linebackers, and we just threw the ball where they were coming from. The one long pass there, he threw it over the head of the Page defender and Will was able to catch it, and the rest was history."

Reynolds, who finished 12-of-21 for 210 yards against Page, attributed his improvement from his first outing to a game's worth of experience and a week of better preparation — Reynolds didn't know he'd be starting the Skyline game until that Thursday.

"I could read the field a lot better," he said. "I could see where my receivers were open, and I just picked their defense apart a lot easier."

The Rams (1-3) are warily optimistic about Reynolds' capability. He can make the throws they ask of him, but they won't expect him to win any games single handedly. But neither would they have asked that of McKelvey.

"He's young, still, and just learning how to throw a football," Roller said of Reynolds. "He's got a good enough arm to get the football into the right places. Can we throw it 30, 40 yards down the field? No, not by any means. Certainly he can get the job done when we need to get it done."

Tonight is a time the Rams really would like to get the job done, especially after cross-county rival Stonewall Jackson's dramatic come-from-behind win last season in Quicksburg.

"They won on a last-second play where the ball slipped through our defender's hands when he should have knocked it down," linebacker Justin Sager said. "It's always an important game. It's a county team."

One person who is thoroughly aware of what Reynolds can do in the pocket is Stonewall coach Dick Krol. The Generals (2-1) were off last week, and Krol went to Page County to scout Reynolds and the Rams.

"The kid is awfully good," he said. "Not that McKelvey's bad, but this kid, Friday impressed me. He did a great job — completed several very, very nice passes, and the patterns were run well."

The game changed Krol's impression of the Rams as a team.

"From the three games they'd played previously and what we'd heard in the paper and everything, I was expecting something totally different," he said. "They're not bad."

Krol is not one to make many adjustments to his schemes to accommodate for an opponent, though he will at least keep in mind the way the Panthers blitzed themselves to death against Reynolds last week.

"We've played fairly decent defense at times, so we're going to change some of it to adjust for it," he said. "But basically, we're going to stay pretty much with what we've done all along."

Even if the Generals don't give Reynolds any easy looks, the sophomore has his team playing better overall thanks to the optimism he inspired against Page County. And that's worth more as much to Roller as anything.

"I think as a sophomore those guys respect him, and I think that's very important," he said. "He has got some leadership ability there, and he's starting to show it, and the guys are starting to rally around him since Bub is out now. Certainly, that's a positive for him."

*Contact Craig Juer at cjuer@nvdaily.com