Jay delayed

HARTFORD CITY — The Patriot offense was rolling.
It scored twice on its first three drives and was primed to continue moving the ball.
But the thunder — and lightning — rolled instead.
The Jay County High School football had a 14-0 lead over the Blackford Bruins in the final minute of the first quarter Friday before the game was postponed because of thunderstorms.
It will be resumed at 7 p.m. tonight, with the Bruins facing a first-and-10 from the Jay County 49-yard line and 52.9 seconds on the clock.
“It sets everything back as far as preparation for next week,” said JCHS coach Tim Millspaugh. The game was delayed for more than an hour, and as the Patriots (0-1) were about to board the bus from the Blackford auxiliary gym to head back to the field, a bolt of lightning struck and Blackford officials made the call to postpone the contest.
It will be the first time since 2014 that the Patriots will play on Saturday. The season-opening game against Delta that year was moved to the following day because of extremely wet field conditions at Harold E. Schutz Stadium at JCHS.
“It is what it is,” Millspaugh said, frustration in his voice. “We’ve got to put that aside and make sure we can refocus and come out ready to play like we did today.”
And were the Patriots ever ready to play.
A steady diet of junior fullback Cole Stigleman to the right side of the field helped the Patriots get to the Blackford 5-yard line. The Bruins were then caught off guard on the next play when Jacob Geesaman took a handoff from Hill on a counter to the left and pranced untouched into the end zone.
The point after kick failed and Jay County had a 6-0 lead just 101 seconds into the game.
“They overcompensated a little bit because we were running so heavily to the strong side,” Millspaugh said. “When we ran the counter coming back it was pretty wide open.”
The same play — to Geesaman, no less — worked again as a conversion run following the Patriots’ next drive after Stigleman found the end zone from the 9-yard line on a Hill swing pass.
Junior Noah Hummel recovered a fumble on Blackford’s second play from scrimmage, which set up Stigleman’s score to cap a three-play drive that started on the Bruins’ 26.
“Very pleased,” Millspaugh said of Hummel jumping on the loose ball and the play of his defense. Blackford, on its two-plus drives, totaled 34 yards on 12 plays, compared to Jay County’s 77 total yards on 14 plays.
“The big thing with the (wing-T) offense they’re running is you have to be very disciplined,” he said.
The biggest play from scrimmage for the Bruins was a 14-yard run around the right side of the line, otherwise Blackford had a pair of 5-yard and 4-yard scampers.
Jay County’s defense, which gave up a number of big-yardage plays last week to Delta in a 33-6 loss, stopped the Bruins in the backfield twice. Brandt Pearson stuffed running back Carson Kinder for a 3-yard loss on Blackford’s first play. On the next drive, Alec Lewis made first contact with Kinder in the backfield and Pearson helped bring him down for a 2-yard loss.
“I’m very pleased we’ve stopped the trap,” Millspaugh said.
As the game resumes tonight, Millspaugh will treat it just like any other contest in terms of preparation, even though is team his ahead by two touchdowns.
“Regardless of what the scoreboard says, we have to treat this like a 0-0 game, go out and play every down like it’s the most important one,” he said.