An experienced Marist team struck fast and hard in Sweet Home’s football opener Friday night, Sept. 6, in Husky Stadium, en route to a 55-13 win over the Huskies.
“There’s a reason why they’re ranked No. 2,” Coach Dustin Nichol said. “They returned quite a few of their skill position guys, and it showed.”
Sweet Home, which returned three starters on offense and two on defense, showed its inexperience.
On the first play of the game, Sweet Home quarterback Aiden Tyler completed a pass to Zach Luttmer, who promptly had the ball swatted out of his hands by defender Hagan Stephenson, who ended up on his back with the ball sitting on his chest. That pretty much set the tone for most of the first half.
The visitors scored on five touchdown passes of 10, 30, 18, 23, and six yards, followed by a 16-yard run late in the second quarter for a 41-0 lead before Tyler connected with Luttmer on a nine-yard scoring strike with 40 seconds left before halftime, to cut the lead to 41-8.
The second half was less explosive. The Spartans scored twice more before Travis Thorpe added six more points for Sweet Home as time expired in the third quarter, on a six-yard run.
Tyler finished with eight completions in 24 pass attempts, with no interceptions, and Sweet Home gained 137 yards on 24 attempts on the ground.
Marist quarterback Max Campbell was 17 of 30 through the air, for 314 yards, with Stephenson, a junior, finishing with 154 receiving yards, including the visitors’ first four touchdowns.
The Spartans added another 248 on 20 carries, amassing 562 total yards in the game, to 151 for Sweet Home.
“This was one of those situations where they had a lot of continuity and game experience and we didn’t, necessarily, as a team,” Nichol said.
The Huskies struggled with miscommunication on the field, and Marist took advantage of their mistakes.
“It wasn’t like they put together long, sustained drives,” Nichol said. “We made more than one mistake and they took advantage. It was mostly big plays.”
While he and his team were unhappy with the loss, they had a “good” film session Sunday afternoon, he said.
“There are changes that can be made. I think, if we played them again, the point total would be different now that we’ve seen them. We didn’t practice against some of their motions because we hadn’t seen them. Now we’re more educated.”
He said receivers need to run “crisper” routes and Tyler needs to read defenses better to be able to find his targets.
Nichol said his goal is to get Sweet Home to the level that the state’s top teams, such as Marist, are playing at, and facing them on the football field is necessary to get there.
“We have a talented group of boys, but these are guys without game time experience,” he said.
Up next is Banks, the defending state champion and a 21-6 winner Friday over Gladstone, where Sweet Home participated in a preseason jamboree.
“We played Gladstone in the jamboree,” Nichol said. “They’re big and tough. Banks is a combination of Marist and our offense. They return quite a few people too. They’re going to be good. It will be a big challenge. What’s going to be nice is to see if our guys can make the adjustments.”
He said facing tough teams early also gets his players ready for the Oregon West League. Cascade beat perennial playoff contender Cottage Grove 55-6 Friday.
“If we schedule lower-level teams, we get a false sense of security,” Nichol said. “Newport was undefeated halfway through the season last year. Cascade beat them 24-7 and then we went over there and beat them 34-7.”
The Huskies also won two nail-biters, including a comeback win over Cascade.
“We won the championship pretty handily,” Nichol said. “I can’t help but believe playing teams like Banks and Marist contributed to that. Hopefully, our learning curve goes up.”
Sweet Home plays at Banks Friday at 7 p.m.