VAN HORNE — A string of field goals isn’t a common way to win a football game, but for the Spartans, it was key to their 28-21 non-district win over Benton Community Friday, Sept. 19 in the Bobcats’ den.
Coach Lucas Stanton summed it up.
“We had three field goals so we got to 28 in an unconventional way, not by touchdowns, necessarily. We were able to cause five turnovers in the game (with Kaden Hoeper, James Thomsen, and Cody Milliman recovering one apiece), so that certainly helped us get the ball back and sustain some drives.”
Benton won the first quarter 7-6 but Solon had a 15-14 halftime lead before the Bobcats went ahead 21-18 in the third. Eli Kampman scored on a 1-yard quarterback keeper while Maddox Kelley scrambled in from one yard out twice to add to Ryan Locke’s three field goals and one PAT kick.
“They’re a really good ball control offense, what they run is a little unconventional, it’s like a scrub option and their quarterback’s a really good player. But I thought our kids were really resilient because we didn’t have our ‘best stuff,’ we just didn’t play our best football like we have been. I think when you go to Benton Community, which is a really tough, gritty team, and it’s just a tough place to play, and come out with a win, you feel really good about that. They battled through some unfortunate adversity, whether it was self-induced or things they (Benton) did, they just battled through it and that’s what you want to see out of a really good team and it says a lot about our kids to be able to do that.”
4-0 ahead of district play
“Arguably (we have) the toughest non-district schedule in 3A. I think Dubuque Wahlert, maybe one other team, has a tough non-district schedule as well but if you can come out unscathed going into district play, we feel pretty good about ourselves. We put ourselves in a really good position for our district (3A-4), postseason, all of that. We did exactly what we wanted to do, so we feel really good about that.”
Looking at the district and some long hours on the bus
Solon travels nearly an hour-and-a-half to Fairfield (1-3) this week, welcomes Keokuk (2-2) next week for Homecoming (October 3) and Washington (2-2) the week after that before finishing out the final two weeks of the regular season on the road at Mount Pleasant (3-1 record, 70 miles) and Fort Madison (0-4, 100 miles).
While pre-district records would seem to point to some relatively easy wins coming up, Stanton and the Spartans are taking nothing for granted.
“You never know, you still gotta play the game on Friday night, and our message has been all year it’s really not about the team we’re playing so much as it’s about us. As cliché’ as it sounds we’ve just got to get better every day, every week regardless of who our opponent is. We can’t lower our standard and our preparation. We want to be playing our best football at the end of the year. We want to keep getting better and peak at the right time.”
Front-loading the season with tough teams, he said, should help the Spartans in district play. And a challenging night, such as at Benton, will only help the squad improve.
“It’ll pay off in the long run. We just have to continue to have the right mindset and standards for us, not worried so much about the teams we’re playing and what their stats are. We’ve just got to worry about us and getting better.”
Thoughts on Fairfield
“It’s a long trip, they don’t do anything fancy, they’re really well-coached and what they do is play defense that’s really simple, but they stick to it, it’s fundamentally sound. On offense we’ll get two formations, they do a lot of misdirection and they pack it in, and they’re going to try to keep our offense off the field as much as possible. Defensively, we’ve got to be better than we were (at Benton) getting stops, getting the ball back and in the hands of our offense. They’re pretty explosive, but they gotta have the ball to do that.” The Trojans will present some challenges to the Spartans, Stanton said.
“We’re going to have to be really physical with them.”