Marion Local Shuts Down Minster 34-0

By Bruce Monnin

MARIA STEIN – The Marion Local Flyer defense dominated most of Friday night’s game against the Minster Wildcats. They held Minster to just six net yards rushing, sacked Minster quarterback Brogan Stephey four times, and had him running for his life every time he dropped back to pass. The Flyer offense then used some big plays to initiate a running clock in Marion Local’s 34-0 victory.

The Flyer’s struck on the first play of the game. Quarterback Tate Hess tossed the ball to running back Kyle Otte. Otte then threw deep to Nathan Buschur who got behind the Minster defense for a 53-yard gain.

“We wanted to get off to a fast start,” explained Marion Local coach Tim Goodwin. “Minster was pretty pumped up in pregame, so I thought maybe they are going to see the toss and fly to the ball and maybe we could hit something. The Niemeyer kid didn’t actually fall for it. Kyle just made a good throw and Nate made a nice catch.”

“We made a mistake in coverage on the first play of the game,” explained Wildcat coach Seth Whiting. "Good play call by them. Our defense played well from the get-go, but they were on the field a lot, and they started to wear down.”

It took the Flyers just three more plays to cover the final 22 yards for the opening score. Darren Meier scored from one yard out for the 7-0 lead.

Minster responded by slowly using the running game to reach midfield on their opening possession, but like all the rest of their drives, the Marion Local defense stuffed the Wildcats on a fourth down run a yard short of the first down and handed the ball back to their offense.

In the middle of the second quarter, the Flyers put together their most sustained drive of the game. They used 12 plays to cover 73 yards, capping off the drive with a big fourth down play from the fourteen. Hess found Otte on a screen pass which resulted in Otte reaching the end zone untouched to increase the lead to 14-0.

Kicker Carson Bills pinned Minster on their own one-yard line on the ensuing kickoff. The Wildcats could not advance the ball and had to punt from deep in their own end zone. This set up Marion Local for 36-yard touchdown run by Otte, who broke three tackles near the line of scrimmage before sprinting the rest of the way to paydirt.

The Flyers had the ball one last time with a little over a minute left in the half. This time Hess threw deep from the Minster 35-yard line, and Otte made a diving grab in the end zone to make the score 27-0 at intermission.

After stopping the Wildcats’ opening drive of the second half, Marion Local set the running clock in motion with a shovel pass from Hess to Drew Lause. Lause ran around right end and outpaced the Wildcat defense for a 48-yard score. The 34-0 score held throughout the remainder of the game.

“I’m not extremely pleased with our overall offensive performance,” added Goodwin. “But when you have the athletes, you can win games where you don’t execute that well. We’re still playing sophomores in the same spots that we did last week, and they didn’t grow up yet. There is no easy fix. We just go back to work. That’s what we do every year.”

"I will never question our kids’ buy-in. I don’t question our kids’ effort and I don’t question our kids’ want to," countered Whiting. “We got beat by a very good football team. There was just a lot of mistakes tonight. We have to clean it up.”

For the third week in a row, opponents had trouble bringing down Tate Hess. He only ran the ball six times but compiled 93 rushing yards. Kyle Otte added another 36 yards rushing and 65 yards receiving while scoring three touchdowns.

Undefeated 3-0 Marion Local (1-0 MAC) next travels to face 1-2 Delphos St. John’s. 1-2 Minster (0-1 MAC) will host 1-2 Fort Recovery next Friday.

Score by quarter 1 2 3 4 Total

Marion Local 7 20 7 0 34

Minster 0 0 0 0 0

First Quarter:

ML – Darren Meier 1 yd run (Carson Bills kick), 10:20

Second Quarter:

ML – Kyle Otte 14 yd pass from Tate Hess (Carson Bills kick), 5:34

ML – Kyle Otte 36 yd run (kick failed), 4:17

ML – Kyle Otte 35 yd pass from Tate Hess (Carson Bills kick), 0:37

Third Quarter:

ML – Drew Lause 48 yd pass from Tate Hess (Carson Bills kick), 8:27

Team statistics ML MIN

First downs 15 7

Rushes - yards 32-224 25-6

Passing yards 169 157

Comp - att - int 6-10-1 11-25-0

Total yards 393 163

Punts - average 1-17.0 3-38.7

Fumbles - lost 0-0 1-0

Penalties - yards 5-51 4-20

Time of possession 21:03 26:57

Individual statistics

Rushing: Marion Local, T Hess 6-93, Meier 10-42, Otte 3-36, Lause 3-18, Seitz 3-14, P Hess 5-14, Heitkamp 2-7; Minster, Bergman 10-20, Richard 1-0, Schmiesing 2-0, Keller 2-minus 1, Stephey 10-minus 13

Passing: Marion Local, T Hess 5-9-1-116, Otte 1-1-0-53; Minster, Stephey 9-23-0-150, Richard 2-2-0-7

Receiving: Marion Local, Otte 3-65, Lause 2-51, Buscher 1-53; Minster, Wuebker 3-27, Niemeyer 2-60, Chase Couse 2-58, Wolf 2-5, Caleb Couse 1-7, Knapke 1-7