INDIANAPOLIS
Kyle Lockard broke on his corner route toward the pylon and noticed that no Perry Meridian defender was following him. Roncalli’s right-handed quarterback Aidan Leffler noticed immediately and heaved the ball as far as he could while rolling to his left.
“Aidan threw it real high,” Lockard, Roncalli’s junior wide receiver, said. “I was thinking, ‘Please don’t be overthrown, please don’t be overthrown.’”
It wasn’t — at least not so much that Lockard couldn’t run under it. He hauled it in just past the pylon and just inside the sideline, breaking a record and scoring a touchdown in the same instant.
Lockard’s 23-yard touchdown reception made him the school’s all-time leading receiver in terms of yardage and helped Class 4A No. 5 rout Perry Meridian 47-16 Friday night in a game that was scheduled Wednesday after positive COVID-19 tests forced the cancellation of Roncalli’s scheduled trip to Bloomington South.
Lockard’s third reception of the evening gave him 54 yards for the game and 1,118 for his career, which moved him past Jacob Luedeman’s previous record of 1,103, set in 2017. He still has two more regular-season games in his junior year, the postseason and an entire season to build on it.
“It’s an incredible honor,” Lockard said.
Roncalli (6-1) still gets most of its work done on the ground, and Friday night was no exception; the team ran the ball 36 times and passed it just nine. Senior workhorse tailback Baron Huebler rushed for 108 yards and three touchdowns on 11 carries, and the Rebels finished with 206 total yards on the ground.
But Roncalli gets just enough out of its passing game to be dangerous, and Lockard is a big reason why. He’s effective in the team’s run-pass option plays because he can make defenders miss at the line of scrimmage, and the 5-foot-11, 141-pounder also has the speed to beat his man deep.
He hasn’t put up big numbers yet this season because he was put in quarantine early in the year, but Friday’s performance gives him 13 receptions for 206 yards and four touchdowns this season, all of which are team highs.
“He’s a huge part of our offense,” Roncalli coach John Rodenberg said. “We’re going to put the pressure on Baron, but Kyle is a junior, he just gives people things to think about. I can’t have people loading that box, and when Kyle does the things he does he keeps that box open. He’s got some good speed, he’s got really good hands. He doesn’t drop balls. He can take the top off a defense, but he can take that short pass and turn it into big yardage.”
Roncalli had extremely little time to prepare for the Falcons, but it didn’t matter much. Perry Meridian scored a field goal by kicker Nestor Gomez on its first drive, but Roncalli then scored 47 unanswered points, scoring touchdowns on each of its first seven possessions. Senior defensive back Ryan Papandria had an interception and a fumble recovery on a kickoff that set Roncalli up with short fields, and linebacker Tyson Garrett also had an interception that put the ball at the Perry Meridian 14.
Leffler finished with 42 rushing yards and two touchdowns to go with 70 yards passing and his touchdown toss to Lockard. Sophomore running back Luke Hansen also scored a touchdown on Roncalli’s first possession of the second half.
“Fortunately for us, we were in a good situation,” Rodenberg said. “They ran a lot of wing-T and surface things we work against. In a non-COVID year I would’ve hated this, but this is kind of the new normal.”
