Fort has rough 1st

FORT RECOVERY — In their first two games, the Indians got record rushing efforts from Mason Evers.
In abbreviated action Friday night, it was the Rockets who dominated on the ground.
Anna and Fort Recovery played less than a quarter of high school football before the game was halted because of lightning, but in that time the Rockets racked up 124 rushing yards and built a 20-0 lead.
“We’re playing a lot of kids that are pretty young and are pretty new to playing varsity football and this is the best team they’ve seen,” said FRHS coach Brent Niekamp, whose team opened with wins over Edgerton and Waynesfield-Goshen. “They’re a little shell-shocked. When we came in (to the locker room) during the lightning delay, all those young guys came in and their eyes were as big as saucers. They’ve never seen anything like that before.”
Anna took the opening kickoff Friday and quickly marched down the field behind the running of Christiaan Williams. He ran five times for 44 yards on the drive, on which the Rockets (2-0) picked up all of their 62 yards on the ground.
Fort Recovery (2-0) went three-and-out on its first drive, holding the ball for just 1:11 before punting it away. Anna got a 26-yard punt return and then needed less than three minutes to score again.
The Indians had a chance to stop the visitors, but on a fourth-and-2 play from the 10-yard line quarterback Josh Robinson faked a handoff to Williams and then bootlegged right before finding Brandon Maurer in the end zone for a 14-0 lead.
After the Indians went three-and-out again, the Rockets marched another 56 yards with Williams scoring his second TD on a 14-yard run.
Anna ran 20 plays compared to just six for the Indians and averaged 7.3 rushing yards on 17 attempts.
“They are very big and athletic across their front on both sides of the ball,” said Niekamp. “We had some match-up problems.”
Fort Recovery netted just three yards on its six plays. Kyle Timmerman and Mason Evers each had 3-yard runs.
The Indians had a chance to make a big play on their first drive, but Evers overthrew a wide-open Trent Kaiser on a deep ball down the middle of the field.
“That’s a coverage we anticipated,” Niekamp said. “We knew that play would be there and we need to hit it. And we didn’t.
“Scheme-wise they didn’t do anything special, we just didn’t execute very well against it. … Everything is the same as far as what they did … but it’s just a lot harder because those players are a lot better than we’ve seen so far.”
The game was stopped because of lightning at 7:55 p.m. Friday with 1:12 remaining on the clock in the first quarter. The teams waited more than an hour before the game was postponed.
Niekamp said he felt his young squad panicked a little bit against the talented Rockets, and he wants to see them come back poised today.
“I want to see us play more determined and more focused,” said Niekamp. “I think those younger players, when things get really hard like that, it’s easy to lose your focus. … We need to stay involved in the game and play really hard. That’s going to give us our best shot at get better as a team and get better as individuals.”[[In-content Ad]]