Indians come up big against Jays

FORT RECOVERY - Delphos St. John's football coach Todd Schulte summed up Fort Recovery's 39-7 win over the Blue Jays pretty easily.

"Total domination, from start to finish" the veteran Blue Jays coach said. "They were faster than we were. More physical than we were. Those are hard things to overcome.

The Indians improved to 3-1 on the season and 1-1 in Midwest Athletic Conference play. St. John's dropped its second straight game to go to 2-2 and 0-2.

"I'm extremely proud of our kids," Fort Recovery coach Brent Niekamp said. "We knew this was going to be a big test with Delphos coming in here. We really responded well."

Fort Recovery dominated on defense, picking off one pass and recovering two fumbles - one by Alex Schoen in the end zone for a touchdown - and held the Blue Jays to just 159 yards of total offense. Mitch Stammen had the other fumble recovery and Tyler Acheson, starting in place of the injured Gabe Reigle at linebacker, intercepted a pass.

St. John's scored its lone touchdown late in the second quarter when Nick Martz found Zach Fischer for a 35-yard reception. Martz was 6-of-21 passing for 50 yards and rushed for 75 yards.

"He's the key of what they do offensively," Niekamp said of Martz. "He's a nice runner and he's improved a lot throwing the ball, too. I'm really happy with how we handled him."

Then there was the Indians' offense, paced by the running game of Cole Hull. The senior carried the ball on seven of the first nine offensive plays for the Indians and scored the opening touchdown with a nine-yard run with 8:25 in the first quarter. Hull later added another touchdown run from seven yards out to finish with 147 yards on 26 carries.

In all, the Indians rushed for 225 yards on 45 carries and three total touchdowns. Stammen (32 yards on seven carries) scored the final touchdown with less than 90 seconds to go in the game.

"We felt like we had a chance to maybe wear on (St. John's) a little bit with our run game. Our offensive line did a great job," Niekamp said. "Of course, Cole and Kyle (Schroer, who had 41 yards on 10 carries) did a great job of running hard. That's something they did well."

Quarterback Caleb Martin had a sharp game, going 10-for-17 for 187 yards and two touchdowns, both going to Wes Wenning.

The second touchdown pass proved to be a memorable one. After an inopportune fair catch signal put the Indians at their own two-yard line and a run resulted in no yards, Martin fired a strike to Wenning, who snagged the ball around the Indian 40 and with no one in front of him, turned on the engines for a 98-yard touchdown reception, one yard shy of the school record. Wenning finished with four catches for 116 yards.

"We had a little stretch in the second quarter where our focus drifted a little bit," Niekamp said. "The thing our guys never stop doing is playing hard. I'm pretty proud of that right now."

"We didn't do ourselves any favors at the beginning of the game," Schulte said. "We were playing catchup from the get-go. We were just outplayed by a better team tonight."

Both teams play road games next Friday. Fort Recovery heads to Rockford to play Parkway and St. John's travels down Ohio 66 to play New Bremen.