Sosnowski shines in sectional

Michael Sosnowski didn’t carry the ball very often.
But when he did, he was hardly tackled.
Sosnowski rushed 13 times for 283 yards and four touchdowns Friday, leading the Greenfield-Central Cougars to a 41-21 victory over host Jay County in the Class 4A Sectional 22 quarterfinal.
“We knew they were physical runners,” said JCHS coach Tim Millspaugh, whose team finished at 6-4.
Greenfield-Central (6-4) advances to the sectional semifinal and will play host to defending champion Delta, which defeated New Castle 27-7.
“Tackling was an issue, but the run fitting was just really, really poor,” Millspaugh added.
Sosnowski, who averaged 8.2 yards per carry entering the contest, carried the ball twice up the gut on the Cougars’ first drive for Greenfield-Central getting 8 yards each time. His third touch went for a 62-yard score, which tied the game midway through the first quarter after Jay County needed just three plays to find the end zone on the opening possession.
The senior’s next rush went for 4 yards, and then he broke free for touchdown runs of 59 and 43 yards respectively in the second quarter.
“What can you say? Geez,” Adam Sherman, Greenfield-Central’s coach, said with a chuckle. “I knew he was good but not that good. He played well. He had to step up because (fellow running back) Skylar (Gary) has been a little hurt.
“I don’t know if you can have a better day.”
Sosnowki’s back-to-back touchdown runs made it 21-7 Cougars, and Greenfield-Central quarterback Andrew Leslie found a wide open Orlando Mojica behind the Patriot secondary for a 41-yard touchdown with 46 seconds remaining.
It was just the second pass attempt of the night for Leslie after the Cougars had run the ball 20 of their first 21 plays.
“What we do is run the football,” Sherman said. “If you look at what we do, we throw some haymakers from time to time. People fall asleep on trying to stop the run.
“You have to stop that, and when you stop that we have some other guys that can make plays too.”
With a 28-7 lead at half, Greenfield-Central wasted no time getting on the scoreboard in the third quarter. On its first play from scrimmage, Leslie dropped back to pass and found Jaden Brown open in the middle of the field. Leslie — he finished 5-for-7 for 141 yards — lofted a pass that Brown caught at the Jay County 18-yard line with no Patriot player near him and he trotted into the end zone for a 35-7 Cougar advantage.
Just as teams have fallen asleep on Greenfield-Central’s passing game, the Cougars fell asleep defensively in the third quarter. Jay County responded with consecutive scoring drives to get within two scores.
“Second half we have to tighten the screws up a little bit,” Sherman said. “I thought we came out a little complacent because of the lead we have. We’re up 28-7, we hit a home run on the first play of the second half. If we’re going to make a run at this thing we can’t sit on leads like that.”
Aided by a pair of penalties, the Patriots had a 62-yard scoring drive. Holton Hill rolled to his right on a boot pass and found Jacob Geesaman in the end zone for an 8-yard touchdown to cut the deficit to 35-14.
It was the second score of the night for Geesaman, who had a 3-yard run on the game’s opening drive after Cole Stigleman set it up with a 46-yard run.
On the next drive, Stigleman got around the left edge from the 2-yard line for a touchdown. The junior rushed a career-high 30 times for 187 yards and also caught five of Hill’s 11 completions for another 42 yards.
Stigleman finished the year with 1,074 rushing yards, becoming the first JCHS player to reach the 1,000-yard plateau since J.D. Mangas totaled 1,865 yards in 2013.
“I think he ran hard,” Millspaugh said. “I think he did a really nice job. He is one of our most athletic kids and we need to try to get him the ball as much as possible … we knew he’d give us a chance to move the sticks.”
Greenfield-Central extended the lead to the eventual final score when Sosnowski snapped off a 65-yard touchdown, finding an opening 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage and outrunning the Patriots the rest of the way.
If not for three possessions that stalled inside deep inside the Cougars’ zone, including the final drive of the first half that ended at the G-CHS 10, the tone for the second half may have been different.
“That was obviously disappointing and critical,” Millspaugh said. “I think if we could have scored once or twice there going into (halftime) that changes things.”