By Mark Ambrogi
For the Daily Journal
The Whiteland defense often takes its cue from senior inside linebacker Daniel Adams.
“Daniel Adams played a tremendous game tonight,” Warriors coach Darrin Fisher said. “When he plays with a lot of emotion, the rest of the team feeds on it. Those guys had great job defensively and think Daniel’s emotion led the way. This is third year playing linebacker. He’s seen a lot of football and studies hard.”
Adams delivered two huge sacks and forced a key fumble to kill a Columbus East drive in the host Warriors’ 28-7 victory Friday night in the season opener.
“The key is never giving up,” Adams said. “We go 1-0 all the time, that’s play by play. This is a great way to get us started.”
Olympians first-year coach Eddie Vogel said his team had too many miscues against a good team.
“We’ve got a lot of things we have to work on,” Vogel said. “I like our effort, but too many missed tackles and too many mistakes.
Fisher was pleased with the special teams performance as well
“The other key besides defense was our punt team really flipped the field,” Fisher said. “The last punt in the fourth quarter was really big. Not just Dalton Hughes, our punter, our guys on the punt team did a tremendous job. Hughes had some great punts, too.”
Warriors junior running back Peyton Emberton led the way with 120 rushing yards but he got plenty of help.”
Whiteland took a 7-0 lead on a 66-yard sweep by freshman Nyrius Moore-Smith with 9:14 left in the first quarter.
“It’s hard for a freshman to be in that spot, and he made the most of it,” Fisher said.
The Warriors fumbled a punt to give Columbus East a short field of 28 yards for a touchdown. Senior Tryce Villarreal scored on fourth down from 1 yard out to tie it with 2:26 remaining in the first quarter. Villarreal finished with a team-high 110 rushing yards.
The Warriors, helped by some solid gains by Emberton, scored on second down and 1 on a quarterback sneak by senior Brant Kunz with 6.9 seconds left in the second quarter.
“That last drive was a big one,” Vogel said. “We talked to our defensive guys about we need to get a stop and not let them put points on the board because they are going to get the ball coming out in the second half. They scored on both of those (possessions).”
Kunz connected on his first and only pass of the game, an 18-yard TD toss to Max Sullivan alone in the end zone following a 5 1/2-minute drive to put the Warriors ahead 21-7 in the third quarter.
“We kept pounding the rock the whole time, and we knew we were going to catch them sleeping at least one time and we just took advantage of it,” Sullivan said. “We kept running to the outside eventually he pulled it up and threw it deep.”
Fisher said it was all about getting first downs.
“When you run the football to move the chains, you throw the ball to score,” Fisher said. “For us, it was a matter of looking at what they were giving us and once we had to dissect what was there we had to find the right formation and right play fake. We made the right call and Kunz made a great throw. Max ran a great route and made a great catch.”
The Olympians drove inside the Warriors’ 5-yard line before Adams forced a fumble and linebacker Zeke Ramey recovered it to kill a drive.
“We had a chance to go in for a score and we fumbled,” Vogel said. “That was a just big momentum shifter. When you get the ball down inside the 5-yard line, one of our goals is to score in the red zone every time.”
The Warriors’ final score came on senior Canyon Valentine’s 32-yard run with 44 seconds left in the game.
“Canyon Valentine did a little bit of everything with tackles on punts, tackles on kickoff, running the football and playing corner,” Fisher said. “Canyon had a whale of a football game, too. That’s him being unselfish and being a team player.”
Whiteland will play at Lawrence North next week.
