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Lawrenceville powers past Chester

Posted October 31, 2015 11:00 pm

By Pete Spitler Staff Writer

In a sense, Lawrenceville did exactly what coach Greg Wood said his team was going to do.

Jake Seed grabbed two second-quarter touchdowns, and Lawrenceville (8-2) held Chester to just 26 yards rushing and six first downs in a 34-7 victory on Saturday at W.O. Smith Field.

"After that first drive, and heck, we gave them everything they wanted on that first drive, then we really bottled them up in the run game," Wood said. "They threw some passes, No. 1 and 22 were going to catch some balls - I don't care who was covering them, we had pretty good coverage and they were still catching them down there - but we really smothered them from a run standpoint and that kept us in the game."

In the days leading up to the game, Wood told the Herald Tribune his plan was to stop the run and force Chester to be one-dimensional.

The Yellow Jackets were forced to rely on their passing game, which went 9-for-14 overall for 92 yards with the lone touchdown and three interceptions.

"We got beat up front," said Chester coach Jeremy Blechle. "We couldn't move the ball, couldn't string it together. Man, we shot ourselves in the foot time and time again."

Chester nearly had as many penalty yards (85) as it did total yards (118). Once ranked as high as fourth in Class 2A by the Associated Press, the Yellow Jackets lost their third straight game to finish the season 7-3.

"If there's a top five things to take care of this offseason, one is going to be discipline," Blechle said. "I'm a first-year coach, but that's something that has to be controlled by a coach and taught by a coach and we had way too many penalties."

Chester trailed 14-7 at halftime and appeared to give up an insurance touchdown when Lawrenceville's Harry Loeb picked off a Curt Meyer pass and returned it 52 yards for the touchdown midway through the third quarter.

But offsetting unsportsmanlike conduct penalties - which resulted in the ejection of Chester lineman Garret Hoffman - negated the touchdown and placed the ball at the CHS 10.

The Yellow Jacket defense then stepped up and forced Lawrenceville to turn the ball over on downs at the CHS 7.

But the momentum generated by the defensive stop quickly evaporated when Demontae Martin bobbled a screen pass from Meyer that was picked up by the Indians' Kenny Waller and returned for the touchdown.

"We were struggling so much from an offensive standpoint that we needed that play from the defense to get us going," Wood said. "Once we did that, that took the air out of their sails and allowed us to score a couple more toward the end."

"That's a dagger," Blechle said. "The percent chance of winning after giving up a defensive touchdown, they are really low.

"We gave up one there and I'm not saying it sunk the boat, but we added a bunch of water to it."

Lawrenceville scored on each of its next two possessions, both on the first play from scrimmage. Logan McGuire scored from 25 yards out and Kenny Waller added a 54-yard touchdown run with 4:37 remaining.

"A lot of decisions, a lot of work in the offseason," Blechle said. "Trying to get our linemen to play all four quarters and all 10 weeks."

Chester took a 7-0 lead on its first drive of the game, getting a 9-yard touchdown reception from Savion Smith, but Seed's two touchdowns from quarterback Bryce Winningham gave the Indians the lead for good.

Offensively for Chester, fullback Blake Eggemeyer finished with three yards on 10 carries in his final football game, while Jordan Berner led the Yellow Jacket ground game with 16 yards on five carries.

The SIU-Carbondale recruit also went 0-for-2 passing with two interceptions and had 11 tackles defensively.

Meyer finished his first varsity season at quarterback with 988 yards, 12 touchdowns and five interceptions. The sophomore completed 56.7 percent of his passes with a quarterback rating of 111.5.

"The great thing about Curt is he is a student of the game," Blechle said. "No matter how you want to spin it, he is a student of the game.

"He makes sophomore mistakes (Saturday) and in other games and that happens, he's just a sophomore."

The Yellow Jackets' focus now turns toward the offseason. Blechle has a nucleus of Meyer, Smith, Martin, Chris Lang (who sat out Saturday's game due to mononucleosis) and the Bash Brothers of Joe Stahlheber and Jake Golding to build around next season.

"We have from November on to next August to fix a lot of these problems (and) tighten down some of the screws," Blechle said.

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