Leesville Road football
PHOTO BY ROB ORAZI
With starting quarterback Josh Stanley out, Leesville Road turned to its running game and senior Dylan Edwards (42) to get the job done in Friday's 59-14 win over Sanderson Friday.
Pride rebounds, routs Sanderson
Mired in a quarterback conundrum thanks to a rash of injuries, the Leesville Road team didn’t need to find a golden arm to lead the Pride past Sanderson Friday night.
They just needed to find someone to hand the ball off.
The Pride rushed for 377 yards while passing just three times — two of which went for touchdowns — in a 59-14 throttling of the Spartans (1-7) to punctuate homecoming. Leesville Road (8-1) entered the contest averaging nearly 14 pass attempts per game.
“We thought we could run it and that’s what we wanted to do anyway to take the pressure off the quarterbacks,” said Leesville Road coach David Green.
Highlights from the second half of the Sanderson/Leesville football game.
Logan Bible made the switch from wide receiver to start his first game at quarterback for the Pride and heaved touchdowns of 35 and 40 yards to Thurston Cox, who also rushed for a score. Bible ran in another touchdown himself and finished with 58 yards on the ground in an option-oriented attack.
“He responded well,” Green said. “He made the right reads and ran well with the ball.”
Bible wasn’t the only one running well.
Andres Lluch ran for 152 yards and two touchdowns in the second half alone and Dylan Edwards got things started with 55 yards and a pair of scores in the early going.
Leesville Road’s starting quarterback (Josh Stanley) and backup (Austin Berrios) both suffered injuries last week, star safety Ryan Mangum continues to sit out and starting cornerback Tariq White went down with an injury on the first play of the game Friday.
As a result of the patchwork lineup, the Pride ran the ball on its first 27 offensive plays and 47 out of 50 overall.
PHOTO BY ROB ORAZI
Linebacker Brad Moody (5) and the Leesville Road defense never allowed the Sanderson offense and running back J.R Soto (31) to get on track Friday night.
“With our (injury) situation it gave us some new energy at practice,” said linebacker Bradley Moody, whose second quarter interception set up Cox’ 17-yard touchdown run. “We don’t have Josh to throw the ball all over but we have great running backs in Dylan and Nate (Whittington). Everybody stepped up and played well. We’re down but we’re not out.”
“They ran the option well,” Sanderson coach Tony Lewis said. “They beat us offensively, they beat us defensively, they beat us in every phase of the game.”
Leesville Road reached the end zone on all three of its first-quarter possessions for a quick 21-point lead.
The Pride went up 42-0 by halftime and the Spartans didn’t get on the scoreboard until the final four minutes of the game. Trailing 59-0, the Spartans' Devin Laws caught a pair of touchdown passes from freshman backup quarterback Evan Parker less than three minutes apart.
Sanderson standout receiver Matt James was held to just one catch for 15 yards. After being burned by Wakefield receiver Nigel King for a big game in last week’s loss, the Pride vowed to shore up the mistakes in the secondary.
“We knew they would see the film of that game and try to do the same thing but we fixed our mistakes from last week,” Moody said.
“We did a much better job against him than we did last week,” Green said.
Andrew Wolfe took over the quarterback duties in the second half for the Pride, who were looking to bounce back after last week’s setback.
“We wanted to see how we would respond to the loss and to all the injuries,” Green said. “And I thought we responded well.”
Leesville Road hits the road next week, visiting Millbrook Friday, Oct. 23. The Wildcats had its open week Friday.
