There's nothing that Carey School football coach Lane Kirkland enjoys more than power football, and that's certainly what the unbeaten Panthers gave him Friday with a 58-12 victory at Dietrich.
They gave the Blue Devils the devil at the scrimmage line.
Carey (6-0, 4-0 league) rushed 68 times for 512 yards and amassed 24 rushing first downs in a Sawtooth Conference eight-man football showdown with the host Blue Devils (3-4, 2-3) that ended on the 45-point mercy rule with 45 seconds left.
Leading the way were senior Heith Adamson (148 yards rushing, 1 TD, 10 tackles), junior Gonzalo Zarate (146 yards rushing, 1 TD, 7 tackles), junior quarterback Trevor Peck (103 rushing yards, 4-of-7 pass completions, 1 TD, 9 tackles) and sophomore Antonio Gamino (70 rushing yards, 2 TD, 7 tackles).
Coach Kirkland said, "I thought our running game executed very well and blocked well into the secondary."
Defensively, Carey needed to contain Dietrich's lightning-fast 6-2, 190-pound senior running back Jaren Stoddard. Although Stoddard rushed 30 times for 275 yards, he slipped away from Carey only twice, once in each half on touchdown romps of 24 and 55 yards.
Kirkland said, "Jaren is a good, strong athlete who has improved quite a bit. He got a few yards but only two scores."
Another key factor for a Carey team that ended up scoring eight touchdowns and kicked off seven times was keeping the ball away from Stoddard on kickoff returns and sprinting down the field to pin Dietrich in its own end.
Mission accomplished, as Dietrich managed only 43 yards total on its kickoff returns against Carey's special teams. After kickoffs, Dietrich started at its own 28, 9, 36, 45, 25, 32 and 20 yard lines, but never in Panther territory. A smashing tackle by Heith Adamson on the second kickoff set the tone.
Meanwhile, junior Dillon Simpson, who scored the first Panther TD on a 25-yard pass from Trevor Peck, led the Panther defense with 11 tackles.
One Carey highlight was "a lucky break, the coach said.
With the Panthers ahead only 8-0 midway through the second quarter, 240-pound senior lineman Andrew Carlson was in the right place at the right time when Dietrich stripped the ball from ball carrier Adamson in the red zone.
Carlson grabbed the ball back and bulled his way into the end zone, sometimes backwards and sometimes forwards, barreling over and carrying four Blue Devils tacklers. It was his first-ever touchdown.
Laughing, Kirkland said, "I like to say the harder you practice, the luckier you are."
It was Carey's sixth consecutive win over Dietrich by a 320-78 margin since the last Blue Devil win in the series, 84-48 on the Carey gridiron back in 2003.
And it set up a pivotal Sawtooth Conference clash between #5-ranked Carey and unbeaten #3-ranked Mackay (7-0, 5-0) on Friday, Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. at Derrick Parke Memorial Field, Carey. Mackay has lost three straight games to Carey since 2006, but they have all been nail-biters—the winning margins 6, 6 and 8 points.
The winning team Friday will likely capture the Sawtooth Conference championship and the top District 4/5/6 seed for November's eight-team 1A Division 2 playoffs.
Points will certainly be scored. Mackay, which has outscored seven opponents 324-64, has shutout only one team, Camas County (1-5, 0-4) in last Friday's 48-0 outcome in Fairfield. Carey, 300-84 better than its foes, has one shutout.
Mackay's stud player is quarterback Kole Krosch, who ran for the first two TDs at Fairfield and passed for the final two scores. Kirkland said Carey will have to deal with Krosch and keep him in check to preserve the program's three-season, 22-game Sawtooth Conference winning streak.
Kirkland said, "Nobody in this conference is faster than Jaren Stoddard, and no one is shiftier than Lezamiz (Michael, of Richfield). Krosch is a good quarterback and he's got better receivers than we've seen so far. But Krosch is the key to Mackay. We'll try to get a little pressure to contain him.
"I think we can use our size to our advantage against Mackay. But, really, I think it will be a great clash over here in Carey Friday and the winner will be pretty dang excited."
Another big Division 2 clash is Friday—#2ranked Garden Valley (6-0) hosting #4-ranked defending state champion Salmon River (6-0).
Check today's Express Web site for game statistics from Friday's Carey-Dietrich clash.
