Lehman quarterback Turner Lachey completed 20 of 30 passes for 304 yards and four touchdowns. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
In a game marked by quick scores and long touchdowns, Lehman Catholic controlled most of the fourth quarter to hold off Miami East for a 45-35 Three Rivers Conference victory.
Sidney, OH – Most of the Sidney Lehman Catholic football team had left the locker room, and the coaches were hanging around and talking to each other. But the night wasn’t over for Evan O’Leary and Devin Pride.
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The toll of 48 minutes of racehorse football attacked O’Leary’s left calf with a cramp. His foot, still wrapped in tape, rested on Pride’s right thigh. And Pride pushed on the ball of O’Leary’s foot to help relieve the pain and stretch the calf.
“We take care of each other,” O’Leary said.
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In so many ways.
The coaches do it with belief in their team that the players are just beginning to see for themselves. And the players, when they most needed to operate as a cohesive 11, changed the game script, blocked their man and ran the ball hard.
The last development anyone expected after 11 mostly quick-strike touchdowns were scored through three quarters was a clock-killing, grind-the-defense-into-the-ground drive. But that’s what Lehman needed after Miami East had cut a 21-point deficit to seven.
And the Cavaliers got it.
After a pass interference penalty and a pair of 13-yard passes, Lehman went to ground. O’Leary, a receiver first and backup running back second, carried the ball four straight plays to move the Cavs to the East 15.
Lehman’s Evan O’Leary explodes for this first quarter 65-yard touchdown on a pass from Turner Lachey.
“He’s a small kid, explosive, he’s hard to tackle,” quarterback Turner Lachey said. “He’s got three kids on him, he’s chugging and he’s not going down. If we need five yards, he’s got five yards.”
East held its ground there, but Daniel Carlisle kicked a 31-yard field goal for the final points in the Cavaliers’ 45-35 victory.
“My mindset has always been run as hard as you can, and hard work pays off … always,” O’Leary said, pausing between thoughts as his cramp was working itself out. “I’m always conditioning really hard … and our team has conditioned really hard this season. … We know what conditioning does for us. … The other team was gassed while we were running it down the field and running clock.”
Lehman (4-1, 2-0 Three Rivers Conference) began the game-clinching 12-play drive at its own 40 and slow-played 7:11 off the clock. East only had 4:49 left after the field goal, and for once in this game that wasn’t nearly enough time to score twice.
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“That was huge momentum,” Lachey said. “Luckily we have a good kicker at a small school. All you got to do is get it to a 20-yard line and it’s a free three points.”
The first three quarters were more like trading a free seven points.
Big play turnabout…East scored on this 53-yard first-quarter pass to Jake Hamaker.
Miami East (3-2, 0-2) scored first on quarterback K.J. Gustin’s four-yard run. Then Lehman built a 21-7 lead by the end of the first quarter. O’Leary scored on a 65-yard touchdown catch on a short push pass from Lachey. Then Lachey’s pass into traffic bounced through for an 18-yard touchdown for C.J. Olding. Then, boom, O’Leary took a short slant pass 62 yards for a touchdown.
“We know the firepower we have, but playing against a good defensive team really showed what we’re capable of,” Lehman coach Dwane Rowley said. “They came together at the right moment.”
The big moments kept coming for the teams with the two of the top three passers and two top receivers in the Three Rivers Conference.
Gustin threw deep for a 53-yard score to Jake Hamaker less than a minute after O’Leary’s second touchdown. Then Lehman responded with a Lachey 10-yard touchdown pass to Olding and a 13-yard touchdown run by Da’Ron Pride for a 35-14 lead.
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Breathing room? Not so fast.
East got the ball back with 31 seconds left in the half at their own four after a punt was downed. Good thing for the Vikings they didn’t take a knee.
Instead, Gustin handed off to Aaron Mills. He had a little room to start on the left side, broke a tackle about 10 yards down field and was in the clear. He had to cut back at midfield to make a defender miss, then outran two defenders for a 96-yard touchdown. Lehman still led 35-21 at halftime, but the game felt far from over.
Lehman’s defense sacks Miami East quarterback KJ Gustin during TRC action Thursday night at 30-0 Field in Sidney.
Lehman scored first in the third on Lachey’s three-yard run, but East responded on a one-yard by Mills and a seven-yard pass from Gustin to Lincoln Littlejohn to enter the fourth quarter with Lehman clinging to a 42-35 lead.
“We’ve been down before, so I think our guys know that if you keep fighting, we always have the chance of coming back,” East coach Hunter Flokertsma said. “We have some playmakers that can score quick, so we know that we can score fast. And in the end, it just wasn’t enough.”
There were more than enough yards to go around.
Lehman piled up 470 yards of offense, including 329 in the first half. Lachey completed 20 of 30 passes for 304 yards and four touchdowns. O’Leary caught 10 passes for 205 yards and rushed 11 times for 48 yards.
Lachey was an all-state receiver last year, but Rowley said since middle school the coaches knew he could be a productive quarterback.
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“We were trying to get another quarterback to step up, but nobody stepped up,” Rowley said. “He’s an athlete that plays and fits well in our offensive system. He’s a leader as well.”
Lachey likes the switch, especially as long as it means the Cavaliers keep winning.
“You get to control every play, you get the ball in your hand every play,” he said. “If you’re down, you’re the one that can choose to go up and win.”
Vikings’ running back Aaron Mills looks back to see who’s closing on him during his 96-yard touchdown run before halftime.
And O’Leary loves what he sees in the guy who puts the ball in his hands.
“He’s a really smart player, his IQ level is up here,” O’Leary said, holding his left hand above his head. “He knows he can make plays out of nothing, and he did that tonight, and he made the right reads. He’s just a great quarterback overall.”
East’s offense almost kept pace. The Vikings rushed for 208 yards, led by Mills’ 184 on 25 carries. Gustin passed for 178, and the Vikings totaled 386. But the two-touchdown holes and three-touchdown hole early in the second half were too deep.
“We’ve just got to execute better,” said Folkertsma, whose team has lost two straight after a 3-0 start. “We had some mental lapses, we let some plays get away from us. Going against a good football team, you can’t let that happen.
“I think we’re a pretty good football team. I think we’ve shown that we can play well. These last two weeks, we’ve shown that we’re not perfect, that there’s still a lot of room to grow. And at the halfway mark, there’s still a lot of football to be played.”
Lehman’s CJ Olding picks up second-half yardage in the Cavs’ 45-35 win over Miami East.
Earlier in the season, the Cavaliers might not have been ready to win this game. Young players, a new quarterback and other unknowns did not inspire a lot of confidence in the ranks.
“We believed in them a lot more than they believed in themselves,” Rowley said. “Now they’re starting to believe in themselves, which could be a bad thing for some of our opponents.”
The Cavaliers have a lot of work to do with games left against Riverside, Covington and Northridge. But O’Leary believes not even leg cramps can slow him or his teammates down, and lack of belief is no longer an obstacle.
“We’re going for the league championship this year,” he said. “It starts in the line for stretching at the start of practice, focusing up and really dialing in on the game that Friday or that Saturday. It’s all about preparing for that week.”
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