A dynamic offensive performance. And a superb defensive effort.
Those two characteristics will help a high school football program win a lot of games.
Those two staples helped St. Joseph-Ogden easily defeat Prairie Central 64-20 last Friday night in the season opener for both Illini Prairie Conference teams at Dick Duval Field in St. Joseph.
Lane McKinney threw three touchdown passes in his first start as the SJO quarterback, with the junior completing 14 of 21 passes for 214 yards.
All three of his touchdown passes went to Kaden Wedig, with the senior hauling in scores from 45 yards, 28 yards and 31 yards.
“The score talks for itself,” Wedig said. “We’ve got two really good running backs. We’ve got a big offensive line. Our receivers are really good, and then we’ve got Lane at quarterback. We knew coming into the season that our offense was going to be good. The question mark was our defense, and I thought our defense played really well, too.”
Senior linebacker Jameson Ennis made a team-high 10 tackles to lead the defensive efforts in a game where the Spartans (1-0, 1-0 Illini Prairie) never trailed against the Hawks (0-1, 0-1). SJO also managed to compile 517 yards of total offense, while holding Prairie Central to 274 yards. The Hawks ran a flexbone offense and picked up 244 of those yards on the ground, with quarterback Collin Kilgus only completing one of his three passes for 30 yards. Kilgus paced Prairie Central with 92 rushing yards on 16 carries and two touchdowns, but SJO enjoyed a 22-0 lead early in the second quarter. Spartans junior running back Logan Umbarger recorded the first touchdown of the season for SJO on an 8-yard run with 7 minutes, 16 seconds left in the first quarter to give the Spartans a 6-0 lead. Then, the McKinney-Wedig show took control.
McKinney hit Wedig on a 45-yard touchdown pass with 5:21 left in the first quarter and after a successful two-point conversion run by McKinney, SJO led 14-0.
The Spartans made it 22-0 on a 1-yard touchdown run by McKinney with 11:40 left in the second quarter before McKinney hit Wedig on a 28-yard touchdown pass with 4:52 left in the first half. A successful two-point conversion run by junior Ryder Van Meenen increased the SJO lead to 30-6.
“It gives us a lot of confidence,” said McKinney, who added 82 rushing yards on 10 carries. “I feel this wasn’t our best night, even if we did put up 64 points. I feel like we have room to improve in every area.”
Wedig stood out with six catches for 135 yards, with his third touchdown grab coming on a 31-yard pass from McKinney with 1:43 left in the third quarter that bumped SJO’s lead to 58-20 at that point. The last touchdown by Wedig came after a 1-yard touchdown run by Umbarger, a 9-yard touchdown run by Umbarger and a 5-yard touchdown run by Van Meenen.
Umbarger led the way with 125 rushing yards on 15 carries, and Van Meenen chipped in 69 rushing yards on nine carries. Sophomore Logan Wedig also contributed with five catches for 69 yards.
“Look, when you return four-fifths of your offensive line, you better be good,” SJO coach Shawn Skinner said. “So many of these guys did play significant minutes last year, and these are guys who are not unaccustomed to our offense, so I was never worried about our offense. Our defense has guys who had never played on Friday or are playing spots they haven’t played on Fridays. I thought we showed at times where I do believe we’re fast. I do believe we play hard. Our biggest mission on defense is to play assignment-sound football. We showed a couple times where if we miss our assignments, we could get gashed. But overall, super proud of how hard we played. There’s not a lot to nit-pick.”
The Spartans have spent this week prepping for their first road game of the season. SJO travels to Paxton to play Paxton-Buckley-Loda at Zimmerman Field at 7 p.m. on Friday in another Illini Prairie game. PBL lost 41-0 at Bloomington Central Catholic last Friday night.
Still, Skinner and the Spartans realize they can’t overlook coach Josh Pritchard and his Panthers if they want to keep their promising start to the season intact.
“PBL had a lot of kids make their varsity debut last Friday,” Skinner said. “That was a tough first game for them in a tough environment. Coach Pritchard will have them ready to play at their place, and with a week of experience, they will be much more prepared.”
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