St. Vincent started slow, but once the Indians settled in, it spelled doom for Grandview.
St. Vincent scored 42 straight points in route to a 49-6 victory over Grandview on senior night Friday.
“It was a big win for us,” St. Vincent football coach Tim Schumer said. “We were able to keep the ball rolling. We would have liked to have kept them out of the endzone for the whole game, but Grandview has some good, young players and they put some drives together and definitely made us work for it.”
Grandview made St. Vincent work for it early, but the Indians also started slow in the first quarter. The Indians fumbled on the second play of the game and the defense had to step up until the offense could get rolling. Kaden Kassel intercepted a pitch to the Grandview running back out of the Eagles’ triple option offense and took it into the endzone to put the Indians up 7-0 midway through the opening quarter.
A short kickoff resulted in good field position for the Eagles and they moved the ball right down the field and got on the board with a nine yard run by quarterback Jacob Walker. The extra point failed and just like the Indians boomed every kickoff down the field the rest of the game, St. Vincent came alive after that.
“I wanted to go fast tonight. I don’t know if people could tell,” Schumer said. “We did that, but ended up having a turnover when we were trying to make a play, but we were able to respond well with the defensive touchdown.”
Trevor Moonier caught a 53-yard touchdown from Christian Schaaf on the first play of the next drive to give St. Vincent a 14-6 advantage and he caught another long pass down to the 11-yard line on the drive after that.
Schaff threw for 241 yards with four touchdowns and one interceptions. While Moonier was the top receiver with 137 yards and two touchdowns on three catches.
Cruz Reitzel converted the drive into points with an 11-yard touchdown run and St. Vincent was cruising up 21-6 with one minute remaining in the first quarter.
Everything was going right for St. Vincent when a snap went over the head of Schaaf to start the second quarter and he was able to pick it up and fire a short pass to Reitzel for a four-yard score.
Reitzel added 105 yards rushing and one touchdown in the game.
Drake Robinson added another three-yard touchdown run with seven minutes before halftime to go up 35-6.
If there was one blemish in the game for the Indians it was the end of the first half, when each team turned it over twice in the final minute. Schumer also felt like his team had too many penalties. At least two touchdowns were wiped away because of penalties.
“We have to execute better,” Schumer said. “We want to make hurt the penalties and little things don’t hurt us.”
The Indians added two more touchdowns in the second half with a 34 yard catch by Moonier and a nine-yard touchdown catch by Simon Barber. The defense held Grandview to 203 total yards (all rushing)
Before the game, St. Vincent recognized the seniors and Schumer also wanted to note that the season is not over yet. He and his team have things they still want to accomplish. The first is that with a victory over Jefferson R-7 Friday, the Indians will clinch the I-55 Conference championship for the first time in 18 years (2004). St. Pius has one loss within conference
“We don’t want this conference season to have an asterisk,” Schumer said. “We want to end it with an exclamation point.”
The second accomplishment will be to keep the top seed in the Class 1, District 1 tournament. With a victory over Jefferson, St. Vincent (7-1) will have the number one seed throughout the district tournament. Scott City is also 7-1 on the season and sits behind St. Vincent in the standings. Schumer noted the game will not be an easy one. Jefferson (4-4) fell to Ste. Genevieve 41-34 on Friday.
“We want to do everything we can to hold onto that top seed and hopefully the stars will align for us, but Jefferson has been playing better and better since the season began,” Schumer said. “the game definitely won’t be easy.”
