Stanton second half too much for East Mills on homecoming

Drake Johnson scored three of his four touchdowns in the final two quarters to help Stanton blow open a 6-6 game at the half in 40-20 win over East Mills to spoil homecoming in Malvern Friday.

The Wolverines (4-1 overall, 2-1 in the district) did a good job containing the dynamic Johnson – who entered averaging better than 200 total yards combined receiving and rushing per game this season – much of the first half with rotation of bracket coverages and situational awareness.

But in Eight-person football devoting that kind of attention to what Schafer calls “the best skill player in the district” can work for only so long.

Johnson scored on a 58 yards scamper mid-way through the third quarter and added a TD catch later in the frame to give the Vikings a two touchdown leading into the fourth quarter.

East Mills co-head coach Kevin Schafer said he thought his defense matched up better with Johnson at running back than wide receiver but the senior proved too much to handle as the game went on.

“He had two big runs that really hurt us and anytime we didn’t double cover him, he really hurt us,” Schafer said. “And when you’re playing Eight-man and you double someone, its going to hurt you someplace else. They had some other kids have big plays too. This is the first time I can remember us every double covering someone in Eight-Man and he had too.”

Once the Vikings (4-1 overall, 3-0) got up the two scores, Schafer said, he could see the wind go out of his team’s sails.

“We didn’t stop them much in the second half anyway but if we had single covered him (Johnson) he would have had an even bigger game. Some of it, I think, was  when they got that second score to go up two touchdowns, you could see in the body language of our kids, it was not good. We didn’t handle that situation well.”

Johnson finished with six catches for 94 yards and two touchdowns and another 153 rushing and two more scores.

The Wolverine offense had its moments, Schafer said. With starting quarterback Michael Schafer sitting out the game with an undisclosed illness, Jackson Wray made his first career start under center. The game plan emphasized the ground game with an eye toward shortening the game.

“We knew to have a chance we needed to turn it into a low scoring game and we had it 6-6 at half and that was the game we needed it to be and that worked for about two and a half quarters,” Schafer said. “Once they got up a couple touchdowns and they knew we had to throw, things kind of went bad for us.”

Schafer said Jackson played well for his first start. The sophomore completed 11-of-27 passes for 138 yards and a touchdown and picked up 66 yards rushing and another TD.

“He did a great job running the ball and threw some good balls but he also missed a few passes,” Schafer said. “Some of it is probably my fault, I haven’t done a good job getting him enough reps in practice. Most of the time of what we’ve done when we did have him working at quarterback it was a ‘wildcat’ situation running the ball and we weren’t working with him a lot passing the ball. So when we got down, we had two throw and he ended up throwing more than 20 times.”

Trevor Glockel led the East Mills defense with nine tackles. Jack Anderson wrapped up six tackles and recovered two fumbles.