By Ryan Hines
rhines@dailystandard.com Van Wert head coach Jeff Hood believes so much in field position that he has a chart of field position in the Cougars locker room.
Field position was the key for Van Wert on Friday night at Celina Stadium as the Cougars took advantage of great field position and four Bulldogs turnovers to post a 30-6 victory in Western Buckeye League action. The game was cancelled with 10:47 to go in the fourth quarter due to lightning after a 40 minute delay.
"Van Wert is a real solid football team and I was impressed with their defense tonight," said Celina head coach Mike Fell. "We pressed on offense trying to make some things happen and made some turnovers giving them (Van Wert) good field position all night long. They were the better team."
Van Wert totalled just 278 yards of total offense, but started just one of eight drives in its own territory giving the Cougars' potent offense a short field to work with.
The Cougars took advantage of the field position by scoring on five of those eight possessions, including three of their first four possession, behind a balanced offensive attack. "The only things that we have on our bulletin board in our locker room is a field position chart and the WBL statistics that way the kids can see what other players are doing around the league," said Hood. "We talk about field position so much and we feel that's the key to having a good offense because we know how hard it is to drive the length of the field. We feel that being a field position team is a priority for us because field position wins. They (Celina) punted into the wind the whole first quarter and since we had 138 yards on punt returns last week, I think that they were a little concerned about our punt return game so they tried to kick it away from our returner."
Van Wert came out passing the ball in its four-receiver spread offense behind the strong arm of sophomore quarterback Jared Myers.
On its second possession of the game, Van Wert took over at its own 26-yard line following a 23-yard punt from Celina at its own three-yard line.
Myers hit Kyle Smelser twice on the drive with the second coming on a 14-yard slant for a touchdown putting the Cougars up, 7-0.
The Van Wert defense then stripped Celina's Jordan Heuker on a reception and took over offensively at the Celina 42-yard line.
A 16-yard run by Jordan McClellan and a Smelser 14-yard reception set up a 1-yard touchdown plunge by Dan Goodlin to put Van Wert on top 14-0 with 3:31 to go in the first quarter.
The next scoring drive for Van Wert was a costly one as Myers went down with a separated shoulder and was forced to the sideline sending in Tyler Bergmann in as the signal caller.
Bergmann took over the quarterback duties at the Celina 12-yard line and complete his first pass for seven yards, but the drive stalled and Kody Heppeard came on and converted a 22-yard field goal to put the Cougars on top 17-0.
"Jared dislocated his shoulder once on the field and then once again on the sidelines when he was working on his range of motion," said Hood. "It's hard to tell right now how serious the injury is, it will just depend on how much pain he is experiencing. We'll do a MRI to see if there is anything torn in the shoulder and we will go from there."
With just 2:53 to go in the first half, Van Wert took over offensively at the Celina 30-yard line following a Bulldogs fumble and Bergmann took a quarterback keeper around the outside for a 23-yard touchdown run giving the Cougars a commanding 24-0 lead at the half.
Bergman added another touchdown run, this one covering six yards, to put Van Wert ahead 30-0 but Celina came up with some trickery for its lone score of the game.
Bergman playing quarterback added a different dimension to the Van Wert offense since Bergmann is usually the Cougars' big-play threat as a wide receiver. The switch in quarterback caused some problems for the Celina defense.
"We prepared all week for their passing offense because their starting quarterback isn't much of a threat to run and when he went down with the injury, it made it difficult for us to adjust to the running-style of quarterback that they had in there," said Fell.
Starting its offense at their own 31-yard line, the Bulldogs' Erik Chapin hooked up with Jordan Heuker on a 45-yard touchdown pass to get Celina on the board. It was a fourth-and-one play with Celina boasting a fullhouse backfield but Chapin ran a short bootleg and found Heuker wide open and the junior wideout did the rest for the Bulldogs score.
Heuker had a big game for Celina haulding in a career-high six passes for a career-high 101 yards.
Celina is back in action on Friday hosting Lima Shawnee at Celina Stadium.
The junior varsity team will play Van Wert at Celina Stadium today while the freshmen teams from Celina and Van Wert will be in action at the high school, also in Celina. |
