In a clash of two of the top teams in the Cardinals Conference, Virginia Military Institute won big over Mary Washington 65-10.

This followed VMI’s 88-0 defeat of Radford a week before. Oddly, the key to VMI’s improvement was the loss of possible their best player. Captain Evan Thompson went down three weeks ago with a knee injury. Thompson, 6-5, 250 pounds, is a powerful athlete who is fit and dedicated. He was the center of the teams attack.

“Losing him was going to put a serious dent in our chances, I thought, of moving forward through the playoffs,” said VMI Coach Wayne Howe. “How the team has performed since has been nothing but remarkable.”

Told they all had to fill in for Thompson’s absence, the players on the VMI team showed they could do just that. As often happens - every player raising his game just a little bit can be more effective than one single player being lights out. The win over Radford was, said Howe, one of the most complete games he had seen his team play.

Mary Washington was supposed to be a sterner test, and they were, but VMI was up to it. VMI started exactly as they wanted and put pressure on UMW in the opening minutes. The Mothers defended doggedly, but VMI wore them down. 

“We kept heaping the pressure on them both at the set pieces and at tackle and ruck time and they just kept hanging in. Credit to them they showed a lot of guts against a much larger side, but eventually the physicality of my team started to wear on them,” said Howe. 

VMI scored two more times before the half-time whistle, and then in the second half “we applied the blowtorch to them.”

UMW didn’t play poorly, and has a talented young team that worked hard. But VMI, bolstered by some athletes from football and soccer who add pace and athleticism, is playing very well right now.

“May Washington came up against an older, more physical team this past weekend and we took advantage of that fact,” said Howe. “My team is really starting to gel well, and the backs are playing brilliantly at times. We have power and pace to burn outside so its going to be very interesting to see how far we can go with this group.”

VMI is now 5-0 in the Cardinals Conference Group 1. UMW drops to 2-1-1 in Group 2.