East Mills rolls in opener, 63-26

    MALVERN - The East Mills football team broke open a 6-6 first quarter game by scoring 44 of the next 52 points in a 63-26 non-conference victory over Adair-Casey on Friday.

    The game was far from a perfect victory for  Kevin Schafer in his first game as head coach of the Wolverines, but he’ll take it.
 “There were a lot of ups and downs, said Schafer after the game. “And you could tell it was a first game, with the humidity there was a lot of fumbles. The second half got sloppy. I don’t know if we relaxed or what. We didn’t want to pass a lot but we haven’t improved as much in the running game as I’d hoped. That’s disappointing.”
  The Wolverines rattled off 26 straight points in the second quarter, capped by a pair of touchdown passes from Luke Schafer to Daniel Duysen, the last covering 50 yards right before halftime.
    East Mills led 50-14 at intermission.
    The Wolverines, and Luke Schafer, picked up right where they left off in the second half. The quarterback found Duysen again on a 30-yard scoring strike to go up 57-14.
    But the Bombers wouldn’t go away. Gunnar Dinkla scored on a 54 yard quarterback keeper and, following a Wolverine turnover, he then found Jordan Wheatley for a scoring strike of his own to cut the lead to 57-26.
    But it was too little too late. The Bombers never threatened again.
    Colby Jennings capped the scoring for the Wolverines when he picked up a muffed punt and rumbled 19 yards for the score.
    Luke Schafer finished with 302 yards passing and five touchdown tosses. He also had two touchdown runs.
    Schafer felt his team was a step slow on defense and they shouldn’t have been, he said.
    “We tried something and it didn’t work as well as we’d hoped,” he said “I don’t think our defensive ends have bought in to what we want to do.
    “And to do what we wanted to do we had to sell out and we didn’t do that. We made some changes but their option definitely bothered us. Some of that is on us, we probably didn’t practice against the option as much as we should have. We did a poor job on that and they got behind us a little too much on defense. But it’s a non-district game and hopefully we play better next week.”
    The Wolverines host Lenox (0-1) on Friday in Malvern. Kick off is set for 7:30 p.m. Lenox lost its opener 50-12 to Stanton on Friday.