Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009

Injuries do little to slow down East

Stevenson rushes for 117 yards and 3 TDs

MOUNT VERNON -- Imagine what the Belleville East Lancers can do when all their players are healthy.

Darnell Stevenson rushed for a game-high 117 yards on 13 carries and scored three times, and East's defense was as good as advertised Friday in a 33-10 paddling of the Mount Vernon Rams at J.D. Shields Stadium.

At least five starters were nursing some sort of injury for the Lancers in their season opener.

"We played through it," Stevenson said. "We just had to step our game up and play hard. We knew we had a lot of injuries, but we had a couple of backups that played good games today. We just had a good team effort."

Stevenson, a 5-foot-10, 184-pound junior, joined the walking wounded as he didn't play in the second half because of cramps.

He was one spoke in an impressive Lancer backfield. Junior Kevin Gettis rushed for 108 yards on 14 carries and scored twice, and junior Keith Chism gained 93 yards on nine carries.

Senior quarterback Cory Schaab ran a stout East offense, completed 9-of-16 pass attempts for 104 yards. The Lancers racked up 443 yards of total offense, 339 coming on the ground.

"This was a total team effort," said East coach Tim Funk. "Schaab did a really good job handling everything, and a lot of guys stepped up and did good things. That's what you like to see as a football coach and like I always preach to these kids, it's not any one guy. It was fun. I had fun tonight."

The Lancers were playing with several injured starters. Most notable was Wisconsin-bound tight end/defensive end Warren Herring, who suffered a sprained left ankle in practice on Tuesday. The 6-foot-3, 249-pound senior played sparingly.

Also hurt, but played, were left tackle John Spengler (broken right hand) running backs Chism (left hamstring) and Gettis (right hamstring) and long-snapper Nolen Dowling (concussion-like symptoms). Junior running back Ryan Herring did not play with a back injury.

"I was pretty happy with the overall effort, especially when you can do that without everybody healthy," Funk said. "You have to be happy to come out on top."

Trailing 10-6 in the opening minute of the second quarter, the Lancers scored 27 unanswered points and kept the Rams out of the end zone for the final three quarters.

"We did some things on them that I wanted to do both offensively and defensively, but we just got gassed a little bit," said Mount Vernon coach Dan Mings. "When you have that many people opposed to us having five or six guys going both ways at any one point, we got tired and I think that showed mentally. We were running on fumes and did the best we could.

"Tonight, tomorrow and three weeks from now, the better football team won. They deserved to win."

East led 26-10 at halftime after a marathon first half that took 91 minutes to play. The two teams combined for 15 penalties for 142 yards in the first two quarters, with East getting flagged nine times for 90 yards.

Stevenson scored on a 39-yard TD run on the third play from scrimmage, but the Rams came back to take a 7-6 lead on a 43-yard TD pass from quarterback James Mulvaney to Kellin Edwards.

East --which had the ball just 3:49 in the first quarter -- trailed 10-6 after a 39-yard field goal by Michael Swinnen in opening minute of the second quarter.

It was all Lancers after that.

Stevenson scored on a 1-yard plunge with 7:37 left in the half, set up by a 37-yard reverse by Chism on 3rd-and-20.

"I had a lot of good blocks and we had a great team effort," Stevenson said. "Coach called good plays, but our line did it, though."

Brandon Rice recovered a fumble on the ensuing kickoff to set up East's third TD, a 3-yard run by Gettis that made it 19-10 with 6:27 left in the half. A 12-yard TD scamper by Stevenson with 2:24 left made it 26-10.

Stevenson had 13 carries for 117 yards in the first half.

"What he has to learn is, he only runs about as fast as he needs to or thinks he needs to," Funk said. "He's faster than that. If we get him running full speed all the time, he's going to be even better."