SOLON– It’s never easy to beat a team twice in a season, the sentiment held true on Friday, Oct. 29, as it took all but four quarters for the Solon Spartan varsity football team to dispatch the Davenport Assumption Knights, at Spartan Stadium, 24-17.
The game went scoreless in the first quarter as the final ticks left the Spartans facing a fourth and goal at the one-yard line. Sean Stahle snatched the ball from quarterback Blake Timmons and scampered off the left hand side of Solon’s line for the score, followed by a Brent Lumpkin kick for a seven point lead to open the second quarter with 11:13 glowing atop the scoreboard.
Solon would lead the entire game, following the score, but mostly by a narrow margin.
Stahle broke away again on a first-and-10 play rambling 48 yards with 9:05 remaining in the half. With the following Lumpkin PAT, Solon claimed the largest lead of the evening, 14-0, over the Knights.
Davenport Assumption made their initial appearance on the scoreboard a little more than eight minutes later as Knight quarterback John Argo picked his way through the Spartans for a 45-yard touchdown, Knight kicker Billy Moore split the uprights, and the Knights closed the gap, 14-7 with a minute left in the half.
The Spartans’ Stahle received the kick off and bounded up the field 64 yards on the return to give the Spartans field position, first-and-10 on the 23, with 46.3 remaining in the half. Timmons fell prey to the Knights’ rush with 39.3 left facing a second-and-18 on the 31 and the Spartans took a timeout. The Knights called a timeout with 6.7 ticks remaining following Solon’s third down play leaving the Spartans facing a fourth-and-nine as they rushed the kicking team on the field. The Spartans called a timeout with 4.3 ticks remaining, shortly after the refs rolled the clock, and sirens began to blare.
As if in inspiration, Don Ellis took to the airwaves during the timeout announcing the sirens were the Solon Fire Department escorting the state champion Lady Spartan cross country team, returning from capturing the title earlier in the day, along with the state fifth-place Spartan boys’ cross country team, to visit the field and be recognized at half time.
The Spartans’ field goal team jumped into position and Lumpkin tacked on a 26-yard field goal for the Spartans, giving Solon a 17-7 lead at halftime.
The only score in the third quarter came as Assumption’s Angelo Jackson broke away from Solon’s defenders, scampering 53 yards for a touchdown, sealed by another Moore PAT kick, to close the gap to Spartans 17, Knights 14 with 10:28 remaining in the third.
With 12 minutes remaining on one of the two teams’ future, Solon quarterback Blake Timmons took-to-foot, blasting up the field with a 30-yard run for a touchdown, and Lumpkin split the posts, giving Solon a 24-14 advantage with 11:24 remaining in the game.
The Knights mounted an offensive but was stymied by the inflexible Spartan defense. With 3:31 remaining in the game, Moore for the Knights was once again forced to lay a boot to the ball, good for a 35-yard field goal to tentatively place Solon at a 24-17 advantage over the Assumption.
With less than three minutes remaining in either team’s future, the Spartans held a tentative seven-point lead and found themselves facing a third-and-seven at the 32.
Head coach Lucas Stanton put the Spartans’ destiny in the hands of the players, allowing quarterback Timmons the freedom to make the call on an option play. The Timmons brothers, Blake and older brother Jake rekindled the previous week’s chemistry, connecting for 32 yards to put the Spartans in the position to run the clock down and earn a position in the Class 3A Quarterfinals with a 24-17 defeat of the Knights.
Blake Timmons rushed for 26 times for 104 yards and a touchdown, completed six of 17 passes for 114 total yards and had no interceptions. Stahle carried the ball 23 times for 128 yards and two touchdowns. Michael Pipolo carried the ball once for three yards. Oaken Foster had three receptions for 48 yards, Jacob Timmons pulled in two catches for 51 yards and Brady Mullen snagged one pass for 15 yards. Pipolo and Jacob Timmons, both, intercepted a Knight pass in the game.
“I really thought Jacob Timmons and Carson Miller came to play Friday night, on both sides of the ball,” Stanton said. “Jacob had some big plays on both sides and Carson was just steady on (defense) and then had some very nice blocks on our last drive to seal the game. The (kick off return) by Sean (Stahle) before half set us up to have a chance to get points on the board which was huge. Lumpkin did a nice job of kicking the (field goal) right before half. The third-and-seven from Blake to Jacob was obviously a key play that helped seal the game. I was proud of how we overcame the touchdowns being called back and still pulled out the (win).”
Solon recorded 20 first downs in the game to the Knights’ 13. The Spartans committed eight penalties costing them 68 yards while Davenport Assumption was called for six costing 50 yards. Solon fumbled the ball twice, losing neither, while the Spartans intercepted the Knights twice.
The Solon victory ended the Davenport Assumption Knights’ season 6-4, elevating the Spartans to 10-0.
Solon travels to meet the West Delaware Hawks (9-1), in Manchester, on Friday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m. in the Class 3A Quarterfinals.
The win affirmed Solon’s earlier victory over Davenport Assumption, 38-10, on Sept. 19, in Davenport, and sends the Spartans to a third consecutive quarterfinals.
Stanton dispelled any notion the early missed connections the Timmons brothers experienced caused him concern placing the late, third-down call in Blake Timmons’ hands.
“Assumption wasn’t doing anything in particular to try to stop that connection,” Stanton said. “Jacob is playing a little of inside and outside (wide receiver) now and we rotate him some, since we are pretty deep at (wide receiver). We really hurt them the first time, in the middle of the field, in the pass game, so they did a few things to try to take that away.
“For our starters not playing many full games, I thought our conditioning was fine,” Coach Stanton elaborated. “We practice a lot of up-tempo and run two groups in practice, so our guys are in pretty good shape. We typically play a little faster than we did Friday night and we need to as we are confident we are in better shape and have better depth than the other team.”
Coach Stanton agreed it was an accomplishment to beat the Knights twice in a season.
“Yeah, anytime you beat a quality opponent it’s good and to do it twice is even better,” he reveled. “Nothing special about the preparation. (The Knights) are a pretty straightforward team? They played much harder this time around. They had some tendencies and alignments that tipped off when they ran those plays. Our guys did a good job of recognizing those from our field prep and film study.”
Coach Stanton did profess to having a couple concerns from the game and dispelled any notion conditioning played into them.
“Yeah, we were called multiple times for a lineman downfield and it ultimately cost us points,” he remarked. “Yeah, after watching the film, I think we had gotten away with it once in the first half and I’m pretty sure their coach spoke to the officials before the second half. There was one that was pretty bad and probably deserved to be called but we had a few that were close, as you are given three yards. I think it was the first one we just have to be more aware of where we are on the field and, on the second one, I think it was more of we were selling the run and took a guy for a ride so it’s hard to be upset about our kids’ effort on that play. We just have to learn from it and make sure we don’t let those things continue.
The West Delaware Hawks defeated the Grinnell Tigers, 48-0, in an opening round victory, also on Friday, Oct. 29.
Coach Stanton was not bothered by the need to travel to Manchester to compete in the playoffs, although the Spartans are 10-0 and the Hawks 9-1.
“We knew when the pairings came out that if we both won that we would have to travel there. The state uses an RPI rating based off of strength of schedule to determine who hosts when two district champs play each other before the Dome,” Coach Stanton explained. “They are one spot higher than us so we have to go there. Not much we can do about it since we don’t control what district we play in the state makes our district and schedule.”
“West Delaware is a good football team,” he said. “Kind of cliché or coach speak when I say this but in playoff football it comes down to the team who wins the turnover margin, doesn’t have a ton of penalties and tackles/blocks better. I like our chances, if we can do those things and also get some of our guys in space against them. West Delaware wants to come right at you and play physical hard-nosed football. We are excited about the opportunity.”

Gallery • 2 Photos

Jeff Hess

Solon wide receiver Jacob Timmons shakes a tackle attempt by Davenport Assumption’s Angelo Jackson on his way to added yards during the Spartans 24-17, first round, Class 3A playoff victory over the Knights, at Spartan Stadium, on Friday Oct. 29.