Chester tries to avoid emotional letdown vs. HamCo

Posted September 03, 2015 11:00 pm

By Pete Spitler Staff Writer

In some ways, tonight's contest could be considered a trap game for Chester.

The Yellow Jackets embark on their first road trip of the season to a rebuilding opponent that was soundly defeated, 52-0, by a much more experienced Johnston City team last week.

The Foxes have just one returning full-time starter and managed only 103 yards of offense against the Indians, all but 37 of which came against JC's backups.

"What you want to get out of Week 2 is fix the mistakes of Week 1 and we've got to take a step up to being in shape," Blechle said. "We've got to come out in a little bit better shape than last week."

Hamilton County has changed its offensive and defensive schemes in coach Brian Blades' second year at the helm and is hoping to win more than one game in a season for the first time since 2010.

"I think they're a disciplined team," Blechle said of Hamilton County. "They have a quick backfield and they're fairly large. You can't look past them, that's for sure."

Kickoff tonight in McLeansboro is scheduled for 7 p.m.

Chester 21, Fairfield 6:

Chester got the start it wanted to in jumping out to a three-score lead, and kept the Mules out of the end zone for three quarters in a win over Fairfield last Friday.

Chester senior Jordan Berner was everywhere for the Yellow Jackets, which tends to be a good thing these days.

"Jordan Berner has to get the ball on that and it couldn't have worked better," Blechle said, speaking about the team's new tactic of using the Berner-focused Wildcat formation. "My anxiety was the first time the center (Tyler Redeker) long-snapped it back to him (and) it worked like it was supposed to, that was a surprise."

Berner finished with 109 yards of total offense and a touchdown against the Mules, with a stat line that broke down like this: 40 yards rushing, 69 yards receiving and 0-1 passing.

He also recovered a fumble, caused another one, intercepted Mules quarterback Brendan Mitchell and finished with 16 tackles.

"On the first week, you never know how to gauge what's going to happen," Blechle said. "Fairfield is a true test. They are a fantastic ballclub and hats off to the defense, they came out and played hard."

Blechle also praised the effort of Demontae Martin, who finished with 44 yards on five carries to spark a struggling Yellow Jacket ground game. Martin's 8-yard run with 5:18 left in the third quarter helped give Chester a 21-0 lead.

"Demontae stepped up," he said. "I mean absolutely stepped up. The play had broken down, kid played hard, couldn't ask for anything more from a guy who had no varsity reps last year."

Fairfield coach Justin Townsend seemed to indicate that his team's lack of execution was the biggest reason for the loss.

"Offensively, I felt like we were moving the ball, we would just shoot ourselves on first down and put ourselves in a bad situation," he said. "A first-and-long, second-and-long is not where we want to be. We want to be a second-and-6 or something like that.

"We shot ourselves in the foot, but I have to give Chester credit, they made some big plays on us."

Colton Land ran for a game-high 145 yards for the Mules, finally getting Fairfield on the scoreboard on a 2-yard run with 7:23 left in the game. The two-point conversion failed.

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