LFO gets Royal treatment
Scott Royal had trouble after the game finding the words to describe his performance on Friday night.
But his play on the field spoke volumes.
Royal hauled in four passes for 112 yards and helped turn the momentum for the Gordon Lee Trojans, who evened their record with a 34-14 home victory over Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe.
It was the second win in a row for the Trojans over the Warriors, coming on the heels of last year’s 33-7 romp.
Royal had all four of his receptions in the first half, but it was two huge catches late in the second quarter that turned the tide of the game.
Tied 7-7 with just over five minutes left before halftime, Royal made an adjustment on a Caleb O’Neal pass and went up between two defenders for a spectacular 41-yard gain. Five plays later, Hunter Teeters’ four-yard scamper put Gordon Lee in front with 2:19 left before intermission.
But when LFO was unable to handle a short kickoff, Andrew Towns fell on the ball to get it back for the Trojans and on the very next play, O’Neal found a streaking Royal on a seam route for a 42-yard TD strike and a
21-7 lead.
“I just have to thank my teammates,” said the soft-spoken senior receiver. “I still don’t know how I caught that first one, but my eyes did get kind of big on the next one. They moved me to the slot this year and it’s giving me some opportunities to make some plays. We wanted to come and play better than we did last week. We didn’t start out great tonight, but we finally got it together. Hopefully we can play like this really the rest of the season.”
LFO tried to tack on a field goal in the closing seconds of the half, but Colin Wright came flying off the corner to block the kick and the Warriors would never recover.
“Scott made a great catch and it gave everyone some energy and we were able to score pretty quickly after that,” Gordon Lee head coach Charlie Wiggins said. “Then we were lucky enough to recover the (kickoff) and were able to score again pretty quickly, and then the blocked field goal was really right before the half.”
Just like last year’s contest, LFO jumped out to a 7-0 lead on the initial drive as Shaman Catoe capped an eightplay drive with a 13-yard run. However, the Warriors couldn’t cash in the rest of the half, despite four of their next five drives going into Trojans territory.
Gordon Lee made it 28-7 on O’Neal’s second two-yard dive of the night and O’Neal converted an LFO fumble into a third score early in the fourth on a oneyard plunge.
LFO put up their final points on a 13-yard pass from Ryan Keefe to Haydn Griffin with less than a minute to play.
Gordon Lee amassed 364 yards in total offense with a balanced attack. Teeters ran 11 times for 107 of the Trojans’ 195 rushing yards, while O’Neal was 8-of-13 for 169 yards. O’Neal completed seven of his last eight passes for 164 yards.
“We’ve got some athletes and some playmakers and when can get them the ball in space and they can make a play, it really changes the dynamic of everything,” Wiggins added. “And we don’t have just (Royal). We have several guys that can make catches and that also goes back to Caleb making decisions. He’s get better at his reads and making the right decisions and I look forward to him continuing to do that.”
For the Warriors, Keefe was 14-of-21 for 107 yards. Sam Eaves caught six passes for 62 yards, while fullback Jesse Flanagan ran 23 times for 98 yards.
Gordon Lee (1-1) will host county rival LaFayette next week, while LFO (0-1) will entertain Heritage in their annual grudge match.