BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Class 1A, Sectional 41 quarterfinal: Winamac (7-0) at West Central (2-7), 7 p.m.
The first three minutes of Winamac’s home game against Triton last week were foreboding.
Triton went for an onside kick and recovered it, forced and recovered a Warrior fumble at the Winamac 6-yard line and then scored one play later on an Anthony Schuh touchdown run.
After that, Winamac held Triton to one first down. Triton finished with 19 yards of total offense. Schuh, who had seven 100-yard rushing games coming in, was held to 20 yards, and Winamac rolled to a 27-7 win to complete an undefeated regular season.
“We fumbled our first play,” Winamac coach John Hendryx said. “It just wasn’t very nice out and wasn’t ideal conditions and put the ball down, and they scored, and from that point on, we were pretty dominant. They had only one first down for the whole game. You can’t ask much more out of your defense obviously than that.”
Meanwhile, Hayden Clark ran for 138 yards and three touchdowns.
“We were a little concerned about the field conditions and stuff,” Hendryx said. “To start the third quarter, one end of the field was a lot worse than the other. So we wanted to be on the better end of the second half. We ended up playing on the muddy end of the field a lot of the third quarter and just did a great job of staying on our feet. I thought the linemen played really well. Clark stayed on his feet. The only guy who had much issue with it is (Jadon) Jones. He’s got such quick feet that he’s just not built for those kind of conditions very well.”
Winamac travels to West Central for the second time in the last four weeks for their sectional opener. Winamac routed West Central 35-0 in their regular season meeting on Oct. 1 and has won the last 12 meetings against their county rival.
West Central’s wins are over Tri-County and Frontier. Those teams have one win combined.
West Central fell to North White 14-0 last week. The Trojans had just 57 yards of offense in that game.
“They did a good job with their quarterback,” Hendryx remarked of North White’s defense on West Central quarterback Blayden Huber. “The quarterback’s really a good player for West Central, and I thought North White did a good job of not letting him really hurt them defensively.”
(Winner plays Lake Station-North Judson winner in the semifinals on Oct. 29.)
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