Jay County falls in finale

Silas Finley set the tone for the visiting Patriots the first time he touched the football.
Heritage limited the damage on the defensive side as well.
Finley’s 64-yard touchdown run sparked a Heritage Patriot offense that scored in every quarter and kept the Jay County High School football team off the scoreboard in a 37-0 shutout Friday night.
“That is huge,” said Heritage coach Dean Lehrman, whose Patriot squad finishes the season 6-3 (4-2 Allen County Athletic Conference). “The kid has worked hard all year. For him to come out and light it up like that it was great.”
JCHS coach Tim Millspaugh, whose team was shut out for the third time this season, said his team wasn’t prepared for the speed of Silas. They hadn’t seen him on film in preparation for the game.
After Heritage held Jay County (4-5, 2-4 ACAC) to a three-and-out on its opening drive, Silas took the handoff from quarterback Walter Knapke on a sweep to the left, cut back across the field and went untouched to the end zone.
It began a night during which the visiting Patriots racked up 286 rushing yards and added another 139 through the air. Lehrman said the ability to move the football to the tune of 425 total yards came down to execution.
“We just preach execution, execution, execution,” he said, driving home the point. “Still, we’re not real satisfied. We’re hot and cold. We have a tendency to shoot ourselves in the foot once in a while.
“There are times where we are clicking on all cylinders and we can be pretty dangerous.”
Heritage’s Justyn Hart had a game-high 122 yards on 18 carries, the last of which was a 6-yard touchdown midway through the fourth quarter that put an exclamation point on the evening for the visitors.
It also didn’t help that at times, Jay County had difficulty moving the football. It managed just 3 yards on its opening drive and 14 on its second, which included two dropped passes.
“There’s times where we did a really nice job,” said Millspaugh, whose team got in the red zone three times but came away without points. “But when you don’t do the little things well it hurts you.
“We had opportunities and we dropped the ball because we were trying to turn up the field before we caught it. We had guys open and we couldn’t get it to them. We are carrying the ball down by our hips and we fumble it in the open field.”
Heritage’s second drive of the game also went for a score when Evan Knapke capped off an 11-play, 83-yard drive with an 18-yard run.
Walter Knapke connected with Joel Deakins for a 10-yard touchdown on the visitors’ first drive of the second quarter, and Lucas Scheumann hit a 34-yard field goal to make it 23-0 with less than a minute before halftime. Heritage scored each of its first four possessions.
JCHS senior Aaron Neal nearly ran the ensuing kickoff back for a touchdown but he was tripped up at the Heritage 43. Two plays later, JCHS quarterback Holton Hill found Neal down the right sideline for a 31-yard gain to the Heritage 9-yard line, but a run for no gain and three incomplete passes stalled the drive.
Knapke found Deakins over the middle for a 38-yard touchdown pass on the first drive of the third quarter to put Heritage up 30-0. It appeared as if Jay County was going to get its offense moving — it had only 103 yards at half but gained 177 in second — when Drew Huffman took a handoff from Holton and scurried 59 yards deep into Heritage territory. Jay County fumbled two plays later.
Huffman, who missed two games because of an injury, eclipsed the 100-yard mark for the first time during his senior campaign. He finished with 114 yards on 14 carries.
Jay Couny turned the ball over on downs on its next two possessions at the Heritage 12 and 10-yard line respectively.
“It was disappointing we weren’t able to execute in those facets in those situations,” Millspaugh said. “It’s not just frustrating for the coaches, it’s frustrating for the kids.
“To come out on senior night, favorite teacher night, Breast Cancer Awareness night, and to not do those things well in a game that we felt was going to come down to the wire, is disappointing.”
Jay County opens the sectional tournament at 7 p.m. Friday at Mt. Vernon (Fortville).
“Next week it is (working on) those fundamentals,” Millspaugh said. “It is those little things. Going into the tournament we’re not going to try to reinvent the wheel … We’ve been doing this stuff for a long time, and when we do the little things well the big picture looks a lot better than it did tonight.”