Meier’s record-setting night carries F-M to district title
MALVERN - Fremont-Mills football coach Jeremy Christiansen knew he would need a big game from Nate Meier in his team’s match up with fellow undefeated and state ranked East Mills on Friday.
Not even Christiansen knew just how big of a game he would get from his senior tailback.
Meier ran over and through the Wolverine defense 28 times to a state-record tune of 500 yards and nine touchdowns rushing. For good measure, the 6-foot-1, 235 pound senior returned a kick off 78 yards for a 10th touchdown and added two interceptions and five tackles on defense.
Oh, and the Knights just happened to secure their second straight undefeated regular-season and their second straight District 8 title with a wild, 80-49 shootout win over East Mills.
“That’s a lot of points there,” Christiansen said after the game. “I knew both offenses were explosive, but I thought the defenses would kind of take over at some time in the game. But you have two teams with some pretty good athletes. This was a fun ball game.”
The game’s first 4:16 had all the makings of another Knight blow out – Fremont-Mills had out-scored opponents 475 to 66 through seven games this season. Fremont-Mills quarterback A.J. Scarborough scored on a 65-yard run on the game’s first play from scrimmage and Meier added a 34-yard and a 5-yard touchdown run before the Wolverines had gained a first down and already punted twice.
But the Wolverines didn’t hang their heads. Quarterback Luke Schafer connected with favorite target Daniel Duysen with a pair of scoring strikes, sandwiched around a Knight three-and-out, to trim the lead to 20-14.
The teams traded touchdowns and a whole lot of yards in a first half that saw the two teams combine for 778 yards and 84 points. The Knights led 50-34 at the break.
East Mills marched from its own 15 to the 2 where Schafer kept himself to trim the F-M lead to 50-41 with just over 10 minutes to go in the third quarter. But that’s as close as the Wolverines would get to the No. 2 rated Knights.
Meier, who had 289 yards and five touchdowns rushing in the first half, scored on runs of 59 and 25 yards on the Knights’ first two second half possessions to push the lead out to 66-41. Meier added a 60-yarder on the second play of the fourth quarter and took his final carry of the game, a 38-yarder, for his state-record tying 10th touchdown with just under nine minutes to go.
“There were a couple of runs he had where all you can say is ‘crazy,’’ Christiansen said. “The guys up front did a great job getting him seams and he was able to make some explosive plays.”
Meier, who entered the game with 858 yards rushing and 26 touchdowns on just 56 attempts in the first seven games, pushed his season total to 1,358 yards and a state-leading 38 touchdowns. Meier’s 500 yards rushing breaks the Eight-Man record of 492 set by Andrew Leeper of Adair-Casey in a 2006 playoff game.
Meier said he sensed he was having a pretty good game but he had no idea he was having a state-record night.
“I thought I was doing pretty good, my linemen were blocking real well. I felt like they were doing their part so I did my part,” Meier said.
Time and again, Meier ran through arm tackles and punished the Wolverine defense. The Wolverines finished with 639 total yards, all of it coming on the ground.
“Nate Meier is excellent,” East Mills coach Kevin Schafer said. “He’s going to be a first team all-state back. The size he has and the speed is really good. But the blocking he has in front of him is really good too. It’s not just him.
“If it was just him, you could probably slow him down. But they wore us down upfront. They wore us down and started running downhill. We missed a lot of tackles where the first guy didn’t hang on. We hope to get a better crack at them but we might get the same result if we don’t tackle better.”
Schafer said it was his team’s inability to contain Meier and a handful of mistakes his offense couldn’t bounce back from.
“We dropped four balls. Two were touchdowns and two were probably 30 or 40 yards gains,” Schafer said. “We haven’t dropped too many this year. It happens, but when you’re playing a team like F-M, you about have to catch every one of them.”
The Wolverines finished with 486 yards, a season-high on the Knight defense. Luke Schafer completed 28-of-45 passes for 336 yards with five touchdowns and three interceptions. Duysen grabbed 11 passes for 168 yards and three scores.
“By far they are the best team we have seen. They are explosive,” said Christiansen of the 8-1 Wolverines.
Christiansen wasn’t prepared to say his team would see these Wolverines again, potentially in a state quarterfinal game on Nov. 4, but didn’t rule it out either.
“In high school its tough to say with short turnarounds and especially after a physical game either one of us could slip up. You just don’t want to plan to far ahead in the playoffs,” he said.
East Mills will Boyer Valley-Dunlap (6-3) in Malvern and the Knights will host Woodbine (3-6) in Tabor in opening round playoffs games tonight. Kick off is set for 7 p.m. on both games.
Scoring Summary
FM 28 22 16 14 – 80
EM 14 20 7 8 – 49
Game Summary
FM - A.J. Scarborough, 65 run (conversion failed).
FM - Nate Meier, 34 run (conversion good).
FM - Meier, 5 run (conversion failed).
EM - Daniel Duysen, 19 pass from Luke Schafer (kick good).
EM - Duysen, 15 pass from Schafer (kick good).
FM - Meier, 3 run (kick good).
EM - Duysen, 28 pass from Schafer (kick good).
FM - Meier, 65 run (conversion failed).
EM - Kaleb Richter, 23 pass from Schafer (kick good).
FM - Meier, 78 kickoff return (conversion good).
FM - Meier, 32 run (conversion good).
EM - Nick Pittmon, 35 pass from Schafer (kick good).
EM - Schafer, 2 run (kick good).
FM - Meier, 59 run (conversion good).
FM - Meier, 25 run (conversion good).
FM - Meier, 60 run (conversion good).
FM - Meier, 42 run (kick failed).
EM - Colton Story, 2 run (conversion good).