Flyers blank Wildcats
MARIA STEIN — The Marion Local Flyers seem to be peaking at the right time following their 28-0 win against Midwest Athletic Conference foe Minster on Friday.
With slow starts a consistent trend for this Flyer football team, the last two weeks have seen them score earlier en route to shutout wins against St. Henry (28-0) and now the Wildcats.
“Our guys played hard tonight, we just don’t execute,” said Wildcats head coach Geron Stokes. “These are simple fixes, at some point were either going to get sick of doing it wrong and start to do it right or we’ll keep doing it wrong.”
The Flyers took the game’s opening drive 79-yards in nine plays scoring at the 7:06 mark on a 1-yard run from senior running back Grant Meier.
After both teams turned it over on downs on their next possession, the Flyers defense forced a turnover with 1:59 left in the first.
A Wildcat quarterback run up the gut resulted in a fumble with Flyers’ Aiden Eifert recovering the ball at the Wildcat 39-yard line.
Two plays later, after a Meier run to the left, facing a second and 6, Carson Griesdorn found senior wide receiver Charles Huelsman for a 35yard strike up the middle with 1:12 in the first to make it 14-0.
“We were excited about our start,” said Flyer head coach Tim Goodwin. “Then it went downhill for a long while. We had another pick, a first and goal from the five, couldn’t do anything with it. We struggled with the better part of the second and third quarters for sure.”
A 49-yard pass from Wildcat quarterback Johnny Nixon to wide receiver Jack Kohne got the Wildcats down to the Flyer two-yard line on their first drive of the third quarter but another quarterback run resulted in a fumble with Flyer Darren Meier falling on the ball.
“We’re putting everyone in bad situations (with turnovers),” said Stokes, as the Wildcats have struggled with ball security this year. “If we just take care of the football, we have a shot. Then, increase our execution. All of these guys are good kids, we’re going to go right back it tomorrow and try and make improvements.”
After a run from Drew Seitz got the Flyers down to the 2-yard line, running back Dylan Fleck punched it in with two runs, the second from oneyard out with 11:16 in the fourth quarter to make it 21-0.
A Wildcat turnover on downs on their next drive gave the Flyers the ball at the Wildcat 28yard line with 9:45 in the game. Fleck would add his second touchdown of the night on another short yardage run inside the 5-yard line with 8:41 in the fourth quarter to cap the scoring at 28-0.
“Normally we’d have a long stretch yet,” said Goodwin on the team being close to finding its stride in a shortened season due to COVID19. “And I keep saying we haven’t played a bad team yet. We’ve been going against physical defenses all year.”
“Discipline and execution, on key plays, we weren’t where we were supposed to be,” said Stokes on what the Flyer defense showed him. “That’s got to happen to beat good teams, it’s how you beat good teams. We have to increase execution percentage.”