Fort Loramie tops Minster
MINSTER — Despite a first quarter lead, Minster was unable to score the rest of the way as Fort Loramie rattled off 34 straight points as the Redskins took down the Wildcats on Friday night in both team’s season opening games.
Fort Loramie got on the board first with a nine play, 51-yard drive that culminated in a Logan Eilerman touchdown catch from Caleb Maurer.
Minster would answer that by going 75 yards during a 16-play drive that was capped off by a Brogan Stephey 1-yard run. A good point after try put the Wildcats up, 7-6.
Fort Loramie’s drive that began the second quarter ended after 11 plays when Maurer’s pass fell incomplete on 4th and 13 and Minster took over on its own 26yard line.
The Wildcats lost four yards on their first play and then two bad snaps in a row led to a 4th and 31 for Minster, forcing a punt.
Miscues on snaps played a crucial part for Minster on Friday.
“We had eight snaps go either past our quarterback on the ground,” said Minster coach Seth Whiting. “We made huge mistakes tonight and we put our defenses back against the wall constantly.”
The Redskins would fumble the ball on their next drive inside Minster’s 20-yard line but the Wildcats were unable to get anything going, either.
Fort Loramie would score again with 3:28 left in the half when Damon Mescher found paydirt from 19 yards out, putting the Redskins back out front, 14-7, following a converted 2-point conversion.
On the second play of Minster’s next drive, Stephey’s second-down pass was tipped at the line and intercepted by Eilerman, who returned it 32 yards to Minster’s 3-yard line.
Mescher wasted little time, punching in his second touchdown of the night on the first play and extended Fort Loramie’s lead to 21-7.
To kick off the third quarter, Maurer hooked up with Jacob Sherman for 34 yards to set the Redskins up at Minster’s 18-yard line and Maurer would later connect with Eilerman again on a 12yard touchdown play.
The woes continued for Minster on its next drive, fumbling on 2nd and 12, with the ball being scooped up by Eilerman who returned it 25 yards for a Fort Loramie score to make it a 34-7 ballgame.
In the middle of the fourth, Minster’s snap on a punt attempt was errant and the Wildcats took a 23-yard loss on the play, setting Fort Loramie up inside the 10yard line.
Ethan Keiser punched it in from there, putting the Redskins up 40-7, which proved to be the final.
Eilerman led all players with 10 catches for 100 yards and two touchdowns, in addition to his fumble recovery that he took in for a score.
“He is going to have to be big for us all year long,” said Fort Loramie coach Spencer Wells about Eilerman. “He’s going to see double teams, he’s going to see a variety of things, so it’s on us to make sure that this isn’t just a one-week thing.”
Maurer finished the night going 14-21 for 196 yards and two passing touchdowns in his first action at quarterback.
“Caleb did a great job of going through his progressions, trusting his reads. I think he did a great job leading and showed poise for being a first-time starter,” said Wells. “He’s been out both his freshman and sophomore years with injuries so this really is his first time playing football. It’s fun to watch, he’s a great kid.”
For his Minster debut, Whiting said the mistakes that his team made weren’t small ones, calling them “major.”
“There were just critical errors on offense. They weren’t little mistakes, they were major mistakes. Those things get fixed with reps,” he said. “There’s times we look out on the field and we have four and five freshman on the field and three and four sophomores with them. We have an incredibly young football team as far as who our contributors are right now. There’s going to be growing pains.”
Fort Loramie spent Friday night breaking in a new defense as they have zero returning starters from last year’s defensive squad.
“This is a brand new defense. You saw early on some guys getting a feel for it. I think we were excited at first and it was kind of getting that second wind,” said Wells. “We were very excited and had a lot of adrenaline. But then I thought we got a second wind and really controlled it up front.”
Wells gave credit to his assistant coaches and tipped his cap to Minster, who he believes will go on to have a great season.
“Credit to our assistant coaches — this has been as prepared and ready for week one as we’ve been since I’ve been here and that’s on those guys,” he said. “They coach their butts off. We’ve got nine assistant coaches — I’m pretty spoiled there — and it paid off tonight. Those guys did a great job.”
“We just knew that Minster was going to play physical and play their butts off and they did,” said Wells. “They’re going to have a good year. They keep playing that hard and we’ve got a lot of respect for what they do.”