Trouble with turnovers

A week after finally being able to put together a bit of an offense, the Patriots entered their only September home game primed to put up some points.

But reaching the end zone is a difficult task when the ball is given away half the time.

The Jay County High School football team turned the ball over five times, including three in the first half, and had a potential game-winning drive end with a dropped pass on fourth down in a 22-20 loss to the Woodlan Warriors on senior night Friday at Harold E. Schutz Memorial Stadium.

“You just can’t turn the ball over,” said JCHS coach Tim Millspaugh, whose team lost four fumbles and threw an interception. “That is not who we are. We work on that all the time. To turn the ball over three times in the first half and (five) in the game, that’s completely unacceptable.”

He repeated it for emphasis.

“To turn the ball over five times, that is unacceptable,” he said.

First-year Woodlan coach Mike Smith, whose Warrior team got its first win of the season, credited his defensive coordinator Chris Albertin.

“(He) did an awesome job dialing up some of the right stuff,” he said. “And then at gut-check time, the kids just made some plays when we needed to and we got it done.

“It’s really that simple. We just wanted it maybe a smidge more than they did.”

Trailing 22-7 late in the third quarter, Jay County (0-6, 0-3 Allen County Athletic Conference) put together a nine-play, 65-yard scoring drive that ended with a Quinn Faulkner 3-yard touchdown run at the 10:37 mark, and the Patriot comeback was on.

Woodlan (1-5, 1-2 ACAC) went three-and-out on its next possession, but two plays into the ensuing Patriot drive, Jacob Kimpel stepped in front of a Sam Dunlavy pass for an interception at the JCHS 39-yard line. He rumbled back to the Patriot 8 before Dunlavy drilled him out of bounds.

The Warriors, however, went backwards, with three incomplete passes and Bailey Cox sacking Woodlan quarterback Jacob Snyder for a 9-yard loss.

With 7:24 remaining in the fourth quarter, Jay County got the ball back and drove the field again. Two Dunlavy passes to Sheldon Eley — they connected for a 91-yard touchdown in the second quarter to help give the Patriots’ their first lead this season, 7-0 — covered 28 yards, and then Cox rumbled 40 yards for the TD, making it 22-20 with 4:06 to play.

On the 2-point conversion, Dunlavy rolled to his right and tried to find Kess McBride in the corner of the end zone.

He floated the pass over one Woodlan defender, but Ethan Vardaman knocked away the would-be game-tying conversion.

Then, after forcing another Woodlan punt, Jay County took over on its own 46-yard line with 2:58 remaining and one timeout.

The Patriots, who host Class A No. 2 South Adams (6-0, 3-0 ACAC) for homecoming Friday, crossed midfield to the Warrior 41. On fourth-and-5 with 1:31 to play, Eley had a Dunlavy pass, which would have been enough to move the chains, slip through his hands.

“That ball (Dunlavy) threw at the end, I thought that was a good ball,” Millspaugh said. Dunlavy finished 5-of-9 for a career-high 146 yards, the long touchdown to Eley and the interception. “It was a good throw. We have to catch it. We just have to catch it, and that kid can catch it.”

Eley caught three Dunlavy passes for a career-high 119 yards. Faulkner covered 89 yards on 12 carries, and Cox finished with 57 yards on eight touches.

Woodlan, which travels to Culver Academies on Oct. 3, exploited Jay County’s soft coverage on its four- and five-receiver spread offense.

Many of Snyder’s passes were quick hits and relied on the receivers to make defenders miss.

As such, Snyder completed 26 of his 37 pass attempts for 252 yards and three touchdowns.

He connected with David Rogers-Potter for a 6-yard score with 28.8 seconds left before halftime and threw a strike to Vardaman for a 21-yard TD as the second-quarter clock expired. Both scoring drives, of 48 and 30 yards respectively, began following Jay County fumbles.

Woodlan’s first play from scrimmage in the third quarter was a 60-yard toss from Snyder to Landin Golden on a play on which Snyder faked a bubble screen to the left and hit a streaking Golden for the big score.

“I knew he’d be able to get the ball out of his hands quick,” Smith said of Snyder. “We have kids that can catch the ball, make somebody miss and go.”