MAC back-to-back

FORT RECOVERY - There were some things Brent Niekamp would have liked to see his team do better. And there were some missed opportunities. But Midwest Athletic Conference wins are far from easy, and he was thrilled his Indians got another one Friday night.

Fort Recovery High School's football team stayed in control throughout, handing the Parkway Panthers a 21-9 defeat.

"There's some things we need to correct, but it's great to get that win," said Niekamp, whose team improved to 3-2 overall and 2-1 in the MAC with its homecoming victory. "Especially in the conference, those are hard to come by."

This is just the third time in school history the Indians have won more than a single game in conference play.

They were 4-5 in the MAC in 2007 and won a pair of conference games in 1997.

After an odd sequence - Parkway (0-5, 0-3 MAC) successfully executed an onside kick to start the game only to fumble the ball back to the Indians on its first play from scrimmage - Fort Recovery set the tone.

Once they got the ball, the Indians needed just six plays to reach the end zone. The key to the drive was a pass from Greg Kahlig that sophomore Aaron Vagedes took 60 yards down the right sideline. Kahlig capped the drive with an 11-yard TD pass to Nathan Keller.

Kahlig would add two more TDs, both to the homecoming king.

The senior quarterback first found Craig Tobe behind the defense on the right sideline early in the second quarter, and Tobe went untouched to the end zone for a 68-yard score.

On second down from the 12-yard line on the Tribe's opening drive of the second half, Kahlig found his favorite receiving target of the night again. Tobe hauled in the pass in the right corner of the end zone and tapped both feet inbounds to give the Tribe a 21-3 lead.

Tobe caught seven passes for 106 yards and the two TDs while Kahlig went 17-of-32 passing. He tossed for 311 yards, three scores and no interceptions.

"When it comes down to it, you see some touchdowns and no turnovers and he threw for over 53 percent," said Niekamp of the leading passer in school history. "That's a pretty solid evening."

Fort Recovery also got a big contribution from Vagedes, who racked up 96 yards on four receptions. Michael Gaerke added three catches, Perry Hull had two and Brian Keller ran 11 times for 55 yards.

"He's really fast," Niekamp said of Vagedes. "He's got the ability when those guys want to get up there and press us and play tough right at the line, he's fast enough to just run past people There's not a lot of guys who can catch him once he gets past them."

The chances to put the game away came in the third quarter. First the Indians dropped an interception with a clear path to the end zone for a touchdown. Then Vagedes got well behind the defense but was unable to haul in a pass from Kahlig.

"We talked about those couple times we got past the defense and didn't connect," said Niekamp. "We have to expect to be able to do those things."

But although Parkway scored on a TD pass from Bryce Bedwell to Caleb Rodriguez with 3:05 left, the Indians were able to fight them off.

While the Panthers had success on the ground - Shawn Miller ran 22 times for 171 yards - Fort Recovery shut down their passing game. Bedwell was limited to just 13 completions on 33 attempts and was picked off by Kahlig and Gaerke in the third quarter.

"We kind of knew that we were giving up a little bit against the run by how we were playing it," said Niekamp. "But they had shown on film that they were a pass-first team. We wanted to try to stop that first and not give up and big plays there. I thought we did that pretty well for the most part."[[In-content Ad]]