St. Vincent football coach Tim Schumer didn’t really want to be doused with a cooler full of water after the game on Friday, partly because it was a 45 degree night.
“The good thing is these jackets are kind of waterproof,” he said.
While he didn’t really want to end up wet, he does understand why.
His Indians used a big second half to dispatch Crystal City 45-14 in the Class 1, District 2 tournament championship game. The title was the first for St. Vincent since 2009.
“It’s been 14 years too many,” Schumer said. “It’s been a long time coming.”
The Indians went up 14-0 on a touchdown run by Cruz Reitzel, his first of two on the night, to open the game and John Schwartz made Crystal City pay for a fumble on its opening drive as he took a screen pass 57 yards for a score to put St. Vincent up early. It was Schumer’s plan to take the ball to open the game and make Crystal City play from behind.
“Crystal City has a ball control offense and I thought if we could take it and score, we could make them play from behind, and see what they could do,” Schumer said. “We wanted to put them behind the eight ball.”
The Hornets responded to the early deficit with a 32 yard touchdown pass on fourth down and the Hornets scored on a 65 yard run to tie the game late in the second quarter, while the Indians stalled.
The Indian offense came through on the final drive as the Indians went straight down the field and scored on a two yard touchdown run by Christian Schaaf with five seconds left in the first half to go into the break ahead 21-14.
“It was huge,” Schumer said of the touchdown and halftime lead. “We were able to go into the half with the momentum after we hurt ourselves with penalties and other things throughout the first half.”
The Indians put their foot on the pedal from there, outscoring Crystal City 24-0 in the second half, forcing a pair of Hornet turnovers along the way.
St. Vincent got touchdowns from Jacob Schremp, and runs from Schaaf and another from Reitzel to cap the game, as he now as 19 rushing touchdowns on the season.
“I told the team at the half that this was a game of grit and determination,” Schumer said. “It would come down to whoever wanted it more. We went out and played our game.”
While St. Vincent has been hot winning their last seven games of the year, the start of the season was rocky as the team entered with high expectations. The Indians lost games to Thayer and Scott City by a combined five points, and after being soundly defeated by Valle Catholic in week 5, stood at 2-3. The Indians then went on to crush the rest of their schedule and win the I-55 Conference for the second straight season.
“I think we exceeded expectations just because of how young we were at the start,” Schumer said. “We graduated nine starters on offense and probably six or seven on defense. There were a lot of unknowns.”
The Indians (9-3) will now travel four hours to Marionville (12-0) in the Class 1 state semifinals. Marionville hung on to beat Portageville 17-14 in their district title game. Marionville will be a tough matchup for the Indians as they are giving up less than six points per game.
“It’s going to be a tough game, but I’m glad we will be one of the last four teams to be playing in Class 1,” Schumer said.
