Warsaw Football: Tigers Pass Opening Test On Senior Night
WARSAW — With the personnel Warsaw lost to graduation last year and the players moving up to fill those gaps in the lineup, head coach Phil Jensen knew his team would need to be able to move the ball on the ground this year.
The Tigers didn’t disappoint in that department Friday, and the result was a 21-6 season-opening win over visiting Columbia City.
All told, the home team rolled up 305 rushing yards on Senior Night, including 136 by senior running back Will McGarvey and 130 by quarterback classmate Tristan Larsh. As juniors on Warsaw’s track team, the duo combined to help the Tigers to a state finalist finish in the 4×100-meter relay last spring, and they showcased that speed on the gridiron Friday, albeit with different running styles. Larsh racked up the majority of his yardage around the edges, and he’d already hit the century mark by halftime with 105 rushing yards over the first two quarters. By contrast, McGarvey — who finished the 2016 season with over 1,000 rushing yards — mostly pounded it up the middle, and he recorded the bulk of his yardage in the second half with 102 yards after the break.
That one-two punch proved too much for the Columbia City defense.
“We tell our offensive line, with those two guys, if we can get guys combo’ing up to the second level and creating
alleys, they’re pretty good,” said Jensen of Larsh and McGarvey. “Will finds it and hits it hard inside and then Tristan will pull it and zip it around the outside.
“Real pleased with Tristan and Will, but real pleased with all our offensive linemen.”
While the Tigers’ run game accounted for 305 of the team’s 332 total offensive yards, Larsh didn’t look half bad throwing the ball, either.
The rookie quarterback who spent last season at wide out connected on 7 of 12 passes with no interceptions for 27 yards, not too shabby for a guy who hadn’t played a start under center since middle school. Eli Owen and Zach Riley were the only two Warsaw receivers to finish with multiple catches as they hauled in a combined four receptions for 9 yards.
“I’m going to tell you what I saw was Tristan throwing the ball pretty good,” said Jensen. “He throws the deep ball. We had a couple in that first half that didn’t miss by much, and it could’ve been two more scores. He was throwing the little swing pass pretty good.
“He hasn’t started at quarterback since eighth grade. I think he had a pretty good night.”
While Larsh, McGarvey and the Tigers O-line got it done on their side of the ball, Warsaw’s defense looked solid in helping get Jensen his 99th career head coaching win, too.
The Eagles finished with 274 offensive yards, but nearly 200 of those came on just four plays at Fisher Field. The visitors made their hosts pay for only one of those big plays when an 80-yard run by Jacob Wigent on third and 11 late in the first half set the stage for an eventual 1-yard touchdown plunge by quarterback Jacob Bolt with under 29 seconds on the clock. That score left Warsaw leading by a tenuous 7-6 margin at the half after Bolt’s failed two-point conversion run, but the Tiger defense rallied to shut out Columbia City the rest of the way.
Perhaps the biggest stop came on the opening possession of the second half.
Columbia City drove the ball down inside the Warsaw 20 but a false start penalty left the Eagles facing fourth and 14 at the Warsaw 23, and after Bolt connected with Wigent in the backfield, linebacker Skylar Knisely tackled him for a loss to stall the drive and give the Tigers back possession. They promptly marched it back 70 yards in just three plays capped off by a 30-yard TD run by McGarvey at the 6:19 stop of the clock that gave them a little breathing room at 14-6 with Harrison Mevis’ second successful point-after kick of the night.
“That was a big momentum shift. They made the big play, but we rally, we stop them on fourth down, get the ball,” said Jensen. “We made a little bit of an adjustment at halftime where we wanted to bring the tight end into the game because we were more of a spread set the first half, and we brought the tight end to spread them out a little bit more across the front. That first series it showed. We hit them three times inside, and Will was just running hard.”
If that third-quarter series was the momentum shift, Warsaw’s final score late in the fourth was the backbreaker.
After Riley picked off Bolt for the second time within a span of under six minutes, the Tigers capitalized with a quick, four-play scoring drive. When Larsh found the end zone on a 17-yarder around the left side with 2:11 ticking down on the game clock, it pretty much sealed the Eagles’ fate.
Along with those two interceptions and two catches on offense, Riley also finished with 22 rushing yards and put in work on Warsaw’s special teams, too.
“The kid never comes off the field. He long snaps for us on the punt team, returns two picks, had some plays at slot — had the nice run on the jet. Another kid that had a big, big game for a senior,” Jensen said.
While the upperclassmen put in fitting heroics on Senior Night in Warsaw, the team’s sophomore kicker showed the promise of things to come.
Mevis, younger brother to All-American kicker Andrew Mevis, converted each of his three PATs and was a weapon for the Tigers’ punt and kick-off teams as well, booting the ball for a pair of touchbacks and salvaging a bad snap to bury the Eagles at their own 9-yard line midway through the fourth. Showing his faith in the young kicker, Jensen even gave him a chance at a 52-yard field goal at the end of the first half, although the attempt fell short.
“He is ahead of where his brother was physically as a sophomore. He’s just got to grow and mature and develop the confidence. That’s why I opted to let him take a shot because I wanted to let him know that we believe in him and that he’s going to have opportunities,” said the Warsaw boss. “Fifty-two yards is probably a little out of his range right now, but I want him to know we believe in him and that he’s going to be a part of it. Boy, he made a big play in the fourth quarter — bad snap on the punt, fields it, still gets it, kicks it down to the 12 or the 14. I like that. That’s heady, so I’m good with that.”
With the season-opening win now in the rearview, the Tigers turn their attention to a road game at East Noble next Friday night. They’ll return home the following Friday for the start of their Northern Lakes Conference schedule opposite Plymouth in a game scheduled for a 7 p.m. kickoff.
“We’re pleased with where we’re at, but we’ve got to continue to get better and better and better,” said Jensen. “We’ve got to go to East Noble. You talk about a quarterback; we’ll see that next week. Then home for Plymouth and then right in the middle of our conference schedule. Pleased with what we did. Big improvement from this week to last week — mostly enthusiasm-wise and energy-wise but some execution as well.”