St. Vincent had to overcome a slow start, but once they did, the engines were humming.
St. Vincent rolled past Grandview 35-13 after a rough first quarter and Coach Tim Schumer was happy the way his team rebounded.
“There’s no such thing as an ugly win,” Schumer said. “If there was we might have played one. Early on, we weren’t as ready to play as we had been in weeks past. Coming off a big homecoming win over St. Pius there can be a lull or you come out flat. It was good to weather that and experience that now to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
Cruz Reitzel had four rushing touchdowns in the game and 90 yards on the ground, while Christian Schaaf found Simon Barber for the other score for the Indians. Reitzel was the beneficiary of long passes that were stopped just short of the endzone.
“Cruz picked up the extra few yards that we needed,” he said. “He ran really well all night, and really helped us move the chains when we needed to. He had a nice run for 23 yards for the last touchdown where he hit the hole and was gone. It was a nice exclamation point on his night.”
The Indians’ defense was the definition of “bend, don’t break.”
Grandview ran a total of 84 plays, and of those plays the Eagles ran the ball 74 times for 250 yards, opposed to the Indians 52 total plays.
“They had a few drives that got into their redzone that we were able to stop and keep them from scoring,” Schumer said. “We put our defense in some tough situations early because we couldn’t get much going in the first quarter. The defense really had to keep us in the game. Once we got to the second quarter we took off.”
The Indians were up 28-0 entering the fourth quarter, before the Eagles found the endzone twice, including once with 20 seconds left in the game.
The Indians (5-3) will host Jefferson (7-1) on Friday in a game that will decide the I-55 Conference race. St. Vincent is attempting to win the conference for the second straight season. The Bluejays suffered their first loss last week 49-7 to Ste. Genevieve. The game is also big for the Indians as they sit in first place in Class 1, District 1 seedings. Schumer will worry about the district seeding next week after all regular season games are finished. There’s a conference title on the line Friday.
“Jefferson got their wake-up call last week and will be hungry, and possibly play their best game with what is on the line,” Schumer said. “We have to be ready from the start.”
