By Keff Ciardello
A purple haze descended upon Shelton stadium Friday night, as Elgin defeated Lehman 52-10 in the Lobos home opener.
By halftime, the Lehman Lobos were already facing a daunting deficit of 45-3 to the Elgin Wildcats. While most teams would blame each other and give up, the Lobos showed their resiliency by coming out in the second half and playing hard. They held the Wildcats scoreless in the third quarter and only allowed one more touchdown with 2:23 left to play in the game. The Lobos even found the end zone when Paul Matthews dove for a one-yard touchdown with 22 seconds left in the game.
“In the first half, Elgin did some things that we weren’t really prepared for and kind of caught us off guard,” said head coach Todd Raymond. “My whole thing is when I feel like we come out like that, coming out slow and making mental mistakes, I feel that’s on me. That’s how I am as a coach. I’m not going to throw kids under the bus. I’m going to take responsibility for that and when we win and play great, it’s going to be on the kids. It’s just the way I am. I need to do a better job; we need to do a better a job of preparing them.”
The Lobos had success on a tricky double reverse when Jeremy Schilhab handed off to Malcolm Turner who handed to Kelton Powell coming from the other direction. Powell took off down the left sideline for a 41-yard gain for the Lobos. With the strong running game Lehman possesses, expect these types of plays to be utilized more.
“We’re trying to show our kids and even people around the program that we’re going to roll the dice; we’re going to take chances. We’re going to do some stuff to catch people off guard and that’s just part of our offense. The other part of it, too, is that Kelton Powell is one of our better athletes and we want to get the ball in his hands. Like tonight, we weren’t really throwing it real well and we got to figure out how to get the ball in (Powell’s) hands,” said Raymond.
Elgin did very well both through the air and on the ground, but they didn’t attempt a single pass after the first quarter. They finished with 337 yards off 44 attempts on the ground.
“(Elgin) is a really, really good football team. They went four rounds deep in the playoffs last year and their head coach is a really good friend of mine and he thinks they are even better this year,” said Raymond.
The Wildcats were able to jump out to an early lead over the Lobos thanks in large part to big plays by the Simmons brothers. The twin seniors accounted for six touchdowns all in the first half, with quarterback Te’Rel Simmons throwing for one and running in two more while running back Da’trean Simmons ran in two touchdowns and ran back a kickoff 99 yards. Te’rel Simmons’ lone touchdown pass was an 18-yard strike to a wide-open Kyle Snell in the back of the end zone.
“I knew coming into this that (the Simmons brothers) are really good,” Raymond said. “My son went to a quarterback camp at Texas State and both of them were there. I saw them both and they are really good. I told my coaches before the game, these are the type of kids where we can do everything right, have everybody in the right place, and they will still make you miss because of their wiggle and their athleticism,” said Raymond.
With his team starting out 0-2, Raymond and the Lobos are remaining positive and taking these two losses as learning experiences for the rest of the season.
“These first two games against Cedar Ridge and Elgin are two of the better teams we’re going to see on our schedule. We have to make sure we’re using these two games to get better. We can go 2-0 or 0-2, it doesn’t affect our goals for the season which is getting to the playoffs. We just have to make sure we’re getting better each week and we learn how to prepare and we as coaches do a better job.”
