Wawasee Football: Eighth-Ranked Rockies Run Away From Warriors, 34-6
SYRACUSE — The injury bug had already bitten Wawasee hard in the first five weeks of the season. It didn’t take long for it to rear its ugly head again against IFCA 4-A No. 8 Plymouth Friday night.
The Warriors lost starting quarterback Aaron Evans on a quarterback sneak on fourth and 1 at the 5:11 mark of the first quarter. It wasn’t long after that that two-way lineman Elisha Tipping went down too.
Evans — who suffered an earlier injury in Week 4 against Concord before returning last week — was helped off the field and sat watching helplessly with his right knee wrapped for the rest of the night. Tipping paced the Wawasee sideline with his right arm in a sling. And the Warriors eventually suffered a 34-6 Homecoming spoiler in Syracuse.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” said a frustrated Wawasee head coach Mike Eshbach of his team’s injury woes. “It is what it is, and I don’t have answers for it. That’s disappointing, the outcome of the score is disappointing, but our guys battled and battled and battled and I’m proud as heck of their effort.”
Even without Evans, the Warriors still managed to find their way into the end zone first, albeit on a 63-yard punt return by Jacob Hand that gave the packed home crowd something to cheer about at the 6:58 stop of the second frame, giving Wawasee a 6-0 lead when Brayden Johnson’s kick was ruled wide. But Plymouth senior Benji Nixon evened the score little more than five minutes later on a 5-yard run around the right side with 1:31 to go before halftime. Derek Smith blocked the ensuing point-after try by Jeremy Drudge, however, and the Warriors were still locked in a 6-6 tie with the Rockies at the intermission.
Little went right for Wawasee freshman backup quarterback Derek Young and the Warrior offense in the second half, though.
A block in the back penalty and a sack of Young by Plymouth’s Sean Masson gave the home team negative yards on the opening possession of the third period, and a fumbled snap allowed Masson to hit punter Levi Brown in the end zone. The ball squirted loose, Plymouth’s Cameron Frick recovered, and the Rockies grabbed a 14-6 lead less than two and a half minutes into the half when quarterback Cole Filson spun his way into the end zone for a two-point conversion run with the clock reading 9:40.
Plymouth led the rest of the way.
“The punt that we fumbled, we can’t do that. We’ll get that fixed, but we just can’t do that. That’s just not what sound football does,” Eshbach said. “We’ve struggled in the kicking game the last couple weeks, and we’ve just got to get a better handle on that. So you lose some momentum there, but we’re still very much in it at that point. The defense battled, but we just couldn’t get a first down here or there, couldn’t get any momentum. Hey, they’re a solid team, and it just wasn’t our night.”
It was the fourth period that really undid the Warriors as the Rockies found pay dirt three times to balloon a manageable one-score deficit into the game’s final margin.
Plymouth finished off a long, 80-yard drive with Filson’s 11-yard keeper at the 10:45 mark of the final frame that gave his team a 21-6 cushion after Drudge’s first successful point-after try of the night. Following a long kick-off return from Hand that set the Warriors up at midfield, the Wawasee offense went three and out, and it took Plymouth just five plays to score again — on a 17-yard pass from Filson to Nixon that the Rockie senior juggled twice before securing from his back in the end zone with 8:14 on the game clock. Plymouth recovered an onside kick to take over at the Wawasee 47, and, just two plays later, Nixon completed his hat trick with a long 40-yard touchdown ramble for the backbreaker with 6:22 still left to play.
Nixon finished the night with 85 rushing yards in 11 attempts, three catches totaling 40 yards and three scores for the visitors.
“He’s a heck of a football player. He does everything for us,” said Plymouth coach John Barron of Nixon. “He can play offense, he can play defense, he’s our return guy, but when we want to get the ball going we’ve usually got to find a way to get it to 22.”
The Warriors finished with just seven first downs with Young under center, compared to 18 total by the Rockies. They were out-gained 142 total offensive yards — led by Dylan Hepler’s 64 rushing yards and Keyen Peete’s 35 — to 370 by their guests, and Young completed only 2 of 9 passing attempts with an interception at the 6:05 stop of the fourth period. The freshman was constantly pressured by a swarming Plymouth defense and sacked several times in a rude welcome by the Rockies.
Will Geer led the Wawasee defense with nine tackles, while Dalton Pearish and Jesse Landeros each recorded seven.
The Warriors dip to 1-5 overall and an 0-4 start in the Northern Lakes Conference. Evans’ status was unknown after the game.
“We’ll take a look at both of those guys. We’ve got two quarterbacks, and we’ll see at the end of the week if Aaron isn’t able to go,” Eshbach said. “If he is, it’s his show, but if he’s not it’s next man up. That’s just how we’ll go with it.”
Plymouth moves to 5-1 with a 3-1 NLC mark. Northridge and Concord lead the NLC race at 4-0, but the Rockies will have the chance to gain some ground when they host the Minutemen Friday.
Wawasee stays in the hunt for its first NLC win on the road at Warsaw next week.