Indians' defense strong in win

FORT RECOVERY — The Indians spent most of the first quarter backed up against their own goal line.
In the game, New Bremen reached the red zone six times.
On five of those occasions, the Tribe stood strong.
Fort Recovery High School’s defense shut out the Cardinals in the first half Friday night, and the offense came alive in the second as the Indians earned a 24-6 homecoming victory.
“I’m really proud of how our defense played,” said FRHS coach Brent Niekamp, whose team held New Bremen to just 57 yards of offense in the first half. “We put them in some bad positions early, but they responded. I think they were pretty confident in what they were going to see from New Bremen, and they executed real well. They just did a great job running to the ball and tackling.”
The Fort Recovery defense was backed up from the start after the Cardinals (0-6, 0-4 Midwest Athletic Conference) returned the opening kickoff to the Tribe’s 21-yard line. New Bremen earned a first-and-goal from the 10-yard line, but the Indians were able to come up with the stop.
Two fumbles put the Fort Recovery defense in tough positions again in the opening quarter, but it stood strong with stops at the 5- and 6-yard lines. It would halt the Cardinals twice more in the second half en route to the victory.
“The most frustrating part about that is every play we ran our kids had umpteen reps of those particular plays,” said New Bremen coach Jason McGaharan. “We practiced our red-zone offense because we anticipated being in the red zone a lot this week. That was the plan. … To run the plays that we worked on in practice … and not be able to have the success in the game … is very frustrating.”
The Indians, who evened their overall record at 3-3 while picking up their first win after three consecutive losses in the Midwest Athletic Conference, got on the board on a controversial play at the close of the first half.
Fort Recovery completed a pass to the 5-yard line, but Evan Schoen was tackled in bounds with just six seconds left and no timeouts. The Tribe looked as if it was going to run out of time, but there was some confusion about whether the clock should have been stopped because a New Bremen player was laying out of bounds injured. After a conference, the officials put two seconds back on the clock and Jackson Hobbs converted a 22-yard field goal for a 3-0 lead.
The Tribe built off of the momentum going into the locker room, giving the ball to Kyle Timmerman on three straight plays to open the second half. He ran for 17 and 4 yards on the first two tries, and then found a huge hole up the middle on the third. He cut to his right past Tristin Hoffmaster at the 25-yard line and rolled to the end zone for a 45-yard touchdown run.
“He ran with a lot of determination,” said Niekamp. “We kind of challenged him this week about being really hard to tackle, not letting that first guy get you. We really saw that out of him tonight.”
Timmerman added another TD in the fourth quarter, this time bowling over Hoffmaster at the goal line. He finished with 130 yards on 14 carries as the Indians did most of their damage on the ground.
Quarterback Mitch Stammen added 164 yards on 13 rushing attempts and recorded the touchdown that sealed the game. He scooped up a snap that rolled back to him, saw a gaping hole up the middle and scampered untouched for a 63-yard score with just 2:38 remaining.
Fort Recovery racked up 343 rushing yards while attempting only nine passes.
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Quarterback Garrett Westerbeck led the Cardinals with 108 yards on 20 carries, but also fumbled in the red zone on his team’s first drive of the second half. He completed eight passes for 83 yards and the lone New Bremen touchdown, a 5-yard strike to Hoffmaster early in the fourth quarter.
After a tough start to the MAC season, Niekamp said it was huge for his team to get back on track on homecoming.
“Any win is big. Any win is important,” said Niekamp. “They’re a quality opponent. In the state of Ohio, they’re a very good 0-6 team, I’ll tell you that right now. There’s a lot of teams that they could beat.
“I’m really happy with how we came away with this one.”[[In-content Ad]]