Rushing attack leads Pirates to win over Owls

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The Perryville football team is quickly turning into a M.A.S.H. unit. With several players already nursing injuries from the previous week, they also threw in other players who were in quarantine. However, through all of that, Perryville was still able to hang on for the 28-20 victory over Windsor on Friday to claim its first victory of the season.
The win is also the first for head coach Brent Roth, but the first year coach deflected all the credit to his players.
“It feels awesome,” Roth said. “I couldn’t be prouder of the guys. I thought we were going to get it last week, but we faced a lot of adversity this week. We put in a lot of work and I’m happy to see it pay off.”
It was never easy for the Pirates as the Owls reached the redzone in the final minute before a pair of passes into the end zone were batted down. That put a great end to what was a crazy week for Perryville.
Quarterback Aiden McGarvey and Alex Sanders missed the game, along with Tyler Rhyne who was out with a concussion. Pile that onto Davin Wheeler and other linemen and the Pirates could have easily been staring at a loss.
However, they leaned on Deven Lukefahr and the running game in the second half. Lukefahr had 112 yards on 16 carries with three touchdowns, while Ben Hotop amassed 90 yards on 15 carries on the night. The Pirates ran the ball 30 times in the second half alone.
“He was running people over,” Roth said of Lukefahr. “We weren’t giving him a lead blocker a lot. It was pretty fun to watch.”

Roth noted that the Owls never changed out of their three down front, which opened lanes for the running game all night.
“We had both guards, our center, and quarterback were all sophomores and it was cool to see them step into the moment and play a great game. They were doubling Ethan and we thought we could take advantage of that by running it on almost every play, and it worked.” Roth said.
Windsor opened the scoring with a 30 yard run by Jordan Foster in the first quarter and the Pirates responded with a seven yard touchdown catch by Blythe from Rilayand Graham, who replaced McGarvey under center.
“I thought he played really well,” Roth said of Graham. “That’s a lot to ask of a sophomore to come in and play well. I saw a lot of good things out of him.”
Roth will have to see those good things out of the whole squad on Friday as they travel to Park Hills Central on Friday.
The Rebels fell to MICDS, the No. 2 ranked team in Class 4, 59-52.
“They are very good,” Roth said. “Our best bet is going to be to keep the ball out of their hands as much as possible.”