High school football: Avon pulls away from Pioneers

AVON — Mike Elder was very wary of Elyria entering Wahlberg Stadium on Friday night and rightfully so. The veteran Avon coach knew his team was coming off an emotional win over its biggest rival at Avon Lake the week before and the Pioneers were a scary team to match up with. Never mind the fact Avon won 48-6. It belied what happened on the field through nearly three quarters. The Eagles are 4-1 overall and 2-0 in the Southwestern Conference at the season's midway point. Elyria fell to 2-3 and 0-2. "Elyria is a talented football team," Elder said. "Kind of coming in, we knew that. We had a lot of concern coming off a rivalry week and the emotional win against our rivals. We expected resistance and we expected them to make plays and they did. Tip your hat to them. It was a game for three quarters." Elyria had just scored on a zig-zagging, breaking-tackles, shifting-speeds 63-yard run by senior Lance Glover that trimmed Avon's 14-0 halftime lead to 14-6 with 9:43 left in the third quarter. Glover's run had all the marks of the shiftiness of a Jack Beidleman and the power of a Tony Godbolt — either father or son from days gone by — as he darted through the defense. But Avon, like the rock-solid program it is, answered quickly and with authority, starting from its 20-yard line after a touchback by new Elyria kicker Tim Rader. Senior quarterback Sam DeTillio hit Ethan Holbrook in stride for 55 yards to give the Eagles a first down at the 25. Four Jakorian Caffey runs later and Avon led 20-6. "I think that shifted the momentum to our side for sure," DeTillio said. "We've played in close games really all year. I think that helped. We're an experienced team coming back this year. That big play put the momentum back on our side and helped us keep going." It was going good as in Nolan Good, who came in on offense later to add a couple of touchdown passes. Good intercepted a pass on the very next play and Avon was in business at the Elyria 2. Caffey's second touchdown in 22 seconds put the game out of reach at 26-6. Elyria was reeling and never recovered. Avon scored three unanswered touchdowns after that. "You can't give a team like Avon opportunities like that," said Elyria coach Devlin Culliver. "One mistake that we make turns into two touchdowns for them. They're at that level of play."We got right back in the game the way we wanted to and then we give up a bomb and everything fell apart after that." "Our defensive interception kind of ended the game," said Elder. "I thought our defense played well all night. Elyria has a big, strong back (Glover) and tried to shorten the game the first half and they played good defense." Elyria was called for 13 penalties — many on false starts that put the Pioneers in a hole on offense. "They were barking out a cadence," Culliver said of the Eagles defense. "Shooting their hands across the line of scrimmage. The referees pretty much basically ignored me when I complained about it." Elder didn't see anything wrong with how his team lined up on defense. "That's something (Elyria) is going to have to clean up," said Elder. "They couldn't get out of their own way a little bit. Coach is going to want to fix that. It's hard enough to get a first down on 10 yards let alone making it 15 or 20. "That's not anything we did. When they clean that up, they'll be a tough team to beat." Contact Tim Gebhardt at (440) 329-7135 or timothygeb@msn.com.