Marion Local Rolls 57-0 Over Minster

By Bruce Monnin

MARIA STEIN — When a 4-0 high school team takes on a 0-4 team, expectations are that the outcome may be somewhat lopsided. Teams who are favored know that it is best to score early to prevent the underdog from hanging around, and that is exactly what the Marion Local Flyers did at the start of each half en route to a 57-0 domination of the Minster Wildcats.

The game appeared it could get out of hand early as Marion Local needed only three plays and 56 seconds to put the first score on the board, as Ben Schaefer did the honors with a 26-yard touchdown run. And while the Flyer defense was stuffing the Minster offense, the Wildcat defense also came alive to keep the game close for a while.

The Flyers were forced to punt on their next possession and lost the ball on fumbles their next two drives. A third fumble almost stopped their third straight possession, but this time they recovered the ball. On the next play Chris Stucke kept the ball for what was one of his few planned runs of the night, an 11-yard touchdown run to make the lead 14-0.

“We didn’t run Stucke tonight because he was hobbling a little bit from last week,” explained Marion Local coach Tim Goodwin. “He didn’t practice until Wednesday, since his ankle was black and blue and swollen.”

Minster responded with their best drive of the night, using eleven plays to drive to the Flyer 30-yard line. But the Flyers sacked quarterback Brian Mueller on a fourth-down play, forcing a fumble recovered by Eric Heitkamp.

The Wildcat defense started to bend on the next Marion Local possession, but finally forced a fourth down field goal attempt in the last minute of the half. Marcus Moeller drilled it through the uprights, to give the Flyers a more comfortable 17-0 lead. Marion Local was not quite done for the half, as they stopped Minster on three straight plays. They proceeded to get a piece of the Wildcat punt to take over at the Minster 14-yard line with ten seconds remaining in the half. It took just one play for Stucke to connect with Alex Moeller for a 14-yard touchdown pass which extended the Flyer lead to 24-0 at half.

With only six seconds left in the half, the Flyers even managed to recover a Minster fumble on the kickoff, then ran out their field goal unit with Marcus Moeller coming up just a few yards short on a 52-yard attempt at the gun.

“I thought in the first half we came out and did exactly what we needed to do,” explained Minster coach Eric Belcher. “It was a tight game at 14-0 when they got that field goal and touchdown. That to me was the backbreaker when that happened. Those extra scores right before halftime really took the wind out of our sails.”

“They did what we thought they would do,” commented Goodwin about Minster. “We told them they were going to come out here and play hard and we saw on tapes how competitive they were. They had played a lot of teams tough.”

Marion Local wasted no time putting the game away in the second half. On their first play from scrimmage, Stucke completed a 50-yard touchdown pass to Alex Moeller to increase the lead to 31 points. During the remainder of the game, the Flyers chalked up four additional touchdowns, including a Ben Schaefer 2-yard run, a Ben Smith 13-yard run, a Dillon Kremer 2-yard run and a Niles Keller 5-yard plunge.

Next week Friday Marion Local, now 5-0, travels to Versailles to play the 1-3 Versailles Tigers, who are in action against Delphos St. Johns Saturday night. Minster (0-5) hosts New Bremen (0-5).

SCORE BY QUARTERS

Marion Local 7 17 14 19 — 57

Minster 0 0 0 0 — 0