St. Vincent coaches and players probably took a big sigh of relief on Friday night. After two tough losses to start the year, the Indians and their offense got on track.
St. Vincent dispatched of its crosstown rival Perryville 49-7. The win was the largest margin in the series since it was restarted in 2016 and the sixth in a row for St. Vincent over Perryville.
“I thought the big thing was that we came out and executed on offense,” St. Vincent coach Tim Schumer said. “Looking at the film last week against Scott City, I felt like we had a lot of missed assignments. I felt like we played a solid four quarters.”
Schumer believes the victory is big for the mentality of his team to get that first win f the season after losing by a combined five points in the first two weeks.
“We are a young team that played in two very tough games and almost came away with the wins,” he said. “I think we learned a lot over those first two weeks and were able to put those things to use and come out here and make sure we can execute and get the job done.”
St. Vincent started off fast taking advantage of an early roughing the passer penalty from Perryville as Indians’ senior quarterback Christian Schaaf found senior Simon Barber to put St. Vincent ahead 7-0 with eight minutes to go in the first quarter.
St. Vincent took advantage of another Perryville miscue later in the first quarter as a snap went over the head of the Pirate punter and was recovered by St. Vincent’s James Unterreiner at the Perryville 3 yard line.
Cruz Reitzel ran the ball into the endzone on the next play to put St. Vincent up 14-0.
“It was a tough loss for us,” Perryville coach Brent Roth said. “We didn’t play very well. That’s really what it came down to. We made a lot of mistakes on defense. Offensively, we weren’t able to get our run game going. St. Vincent took it to us in the trenches.”
From there the Indians rolled.
St. Vincent’s third touchdown of the game came on a 17-yard pass from Schaaf to Clayton Gremaud, who is starting to emerge as another offensive weapon for the Indians. Perryville finally got on the scoreboard in the second quarter with a 26-yard pass from Rilaynd Graham to Chase Richardet with 2:04 remaining before halftime. It’s Graham’s third touchdown of the season but it was the only time in the game the Pirates saw the end zone.
The Indians responded quickly, with a two-yard run by Schaaf with 1:39 left before the half that was set up by a long pass. Schaaf scored four touchdowns (two passing and two rushing) in the game to lead the Indians.
The Indians scored four more touchdowns in the ground game. Schaaf scored two rushing touchdowns before passing it off to Eli Abernathy for a score. Gremaud then rounded out the scoring for the Indians in the fourth quarter with a 78-yard rushing touchdown.
The defense for the Indians was stout outside of the touchdown by Richardet in the second quarter. Perryville was not able to gain much ground on offense the remainder of the night. . St. Vincent had one interception by John Schwartz and a couple fumble recoveries in the game.
“Graham is quick and got loose on a couple of runs, but for the most part we were able to keep that under control and get the ball back to our offense.”
St. Vincent will travel to Herculaneum this Fridat and Perryville will host Bayless, both games are at 7 p.m.
