‘Missed opportunities’

The Patriots forced three first-half turnovers, the final of which led to a drive to the red zone. With a 1st-and-goal at the 10-yard line, the Starfires made their stand to keep the Patriots scoreless before the intermission.

When the teams got back on the gridiron in the third, the Patriots couldn’t do the same on the Starfires’ opening drive.

However, they bounced back quickly to make it back in the red zone with enough time to make a comeback. Just as the Patriots thought they had a chance to turn the tide, Gavin Litwiller swooped in to take the ball away in the end zone.

The Patriots lost another opportunity. The Starfires immediately took advantage.

Despite gaining an extra 81 yards and running 36 more offensive plays, the Jay County High School football team couldn’t take advantage of its opportunities on Friday night, falling to the South Adams Starfires 34-14.

“Missed opportunities,” said JCHS coach Grant Zgunda in response to overall thoughts on the game. “We just had missed opportunities. We had untimely penalties, some drops, you know, and it just kind of accumulated. It just seemed like it happened at inopportune times. …

“It seemed like it was 7-0 there for a while and we had opportunities. Like I said, we just missed those opportunities to keep the game close. So, it just got away from us.”

The first missed opportunity Zgunda brought up involved the 11-play opening drive for Jay County (2-5, 1-4 Allen County Athletic Conference). The Patriots went to the ground to try and grind things out against South Adams (3-4, 1-3 ACAC), knowing they were aggressive and could be enticed offsides.

After moving 31 yards downfield, JCHS faced fourth-and-5 on the 36-yard line. A.J. Myers got the ball but came up three yards short for a turnover on downs.

They got another opportunity one minute later, when Aiden Phillips recovered a fumble by SAHS quarterback Tytus Lehman. That opportunity got wasted on Jay County’s own fumble that Ethan Schwartz recovered. Six plays later, South Adams crossed the end zone on a 5-yard run by Dillan Ramirez.

JCHS came up empty on the next drive, punting the ball away just for Lehman to find Derek McKean for a 79-yard TD pass two plays later.

    Jay County High School’s Brady Jetmore prepares to catch a 19-yard pass from Sean Bailey during Friday night’s 34-14 loss to South Adams. Jetmore reeled in 29 of the 221 passing yards from Bailey. (The Commercial Review/Andrew Balko)
 

The Patriots couldn’t get going on the next two possessions and were forced to punt the ball away. In between the two drives, Lucas Strait picked off Lehman, but a fumble and a delay of game held Jay County back.

Strait hauled in his second interception of the night on South Adams’ third drive of the quarter, and a 30-yard pass from Sean Bailey to Benson Ward got the ball rolling for JCHS. With less than a minute left in the half, Jay County made their way to the 10-yard line.

Bailey initially got taken down two yards behind the line of scrimmage before he found Grant Wendel to reach the five. The senior again got stopped before the line and then his pass to Ben Crouch fell incomplete, giving the Starfires the ball back with 19 seconds flat.

“That was enormous, because it could have easily been 14-14,” said South Adams coach Grant Moser. “That was a big force obviously going into the half.

“It was fourth down and I got them in the huddle, I said ‘Listen, how big is it if we get a stop and then in the second half we get the ball back?’ … All night long, I think they got a lot of yardage, but we did a great job of bending, not breaking.”

South Adams did go on to score on the opening drive of the second half on a 12-yard quarterback keeper by Lehman.

Jay County again pushed the red zone as a pair of SAHS penalties and a pair of big passes to Carter Fugiett and Wendel got the Patriots to the 10-yard line. The drive ended there as on third-and-nine, Bailey’s throw wound up in the arms of Litwiller, who brought the ball from the end zone to the Jay County 34.

A pair of Will Patterson rushes picked up 25 yards before Lehman found himself scoring a second time on a 9-yard carry. 

The Patriots finally broke an 87 minute, 14 second-long scoring drought — they hadn’t scored since the fourth quarter of week five’s loss to Bluffton — with a 1-yard carry by Myers to start the fourth quarter.

To close out the game, the Starfires scored on a 3-yard rush by Wes Summersett, and Bailey lunged two yards for his own quarterback-keeper touchdown. JCHS ended with 343 yards, led by Bailey with 221 through the air and 48 on the ground. South Adams only totaled 262 yards for their five scores, with Lehman providing 119 passing yards and 50 rushing.

Jay County will get a non-conference opponent next as Lapel comes to Portland on Oct. 11 before wrapping the season up against Heritage. Zgunda will look for his team to clean up some of the mistakes to get headed in the right direction for the sectional game to follow.

“We can compete with both of those teams if we go out and make plays that we didn’t make tonight,” Zgunda said. “We’ve just got to keep getting better. … Right now our focus is, we’re not going to win the conference, that’s obviously out of the question, but that’s what we’re going to work towards; being as good as we can around sectional. Stranger things have happened.”