By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Highlands’ Bluebirds had too much of everything in ending a three-game losing streak to Cooper’s Jaguars Friday with a 28-14 win in front of a capacity crowd in Union.
Too much offense. Too much defense. Too much ground game. Too much in the air. Too much size. Too much physicality.
But more than anything, too much Tayden Lorenzen.
You could say Cooper was out-physicaled, out-hit and out-athleted, but mostly you could say the Jaguars were out-Lorenzened.
Here are the numbers for Lorenzen, a 6-foot-3, 230-pound junior H-back/quarterback/tight end/ linebacker. How about 103 yards rushing on 20 carries for three touchdowns, with two passes thrown and completed for another 16 yards and two passes caught for eight yards.
But if football was like gymnastics or diving, and they factored degree-of-difficulty points into the mix, Lorenzen’s scoring runs alone – when he’d run over defenders at the line of scrimmage, then spin away – sometimes twice – from the next level of tacklers and finish up by hurdling the last line of resistance, would be worth more than six.
Lunge, spin, leap and find the end zone – or just the first down marker. Highlands had 26 first downs to Cooper’s 10. And 35:12 time of possession to Cooper’s 12:48.
“In the moment, I don’t think of anything,” Lorenzen of his improvisational run technique, he just does it. Not unlike the way his late father, the “Hefty Lefty” Jared Lorenzen did at Highlands and Kentucky.
“My teammates block for me and I just go where the hole opens up,” he says in “the Florida package,” Highlands’ coach Bob Sphire calls it, after the way Florida utilized Tim Tebow as a powerful running QB.
“We’d hit him at the line of scrimmage,” Cooper coach Randy Borchers said, “and . . . “ Well, we saw what the “and” was.
But as much as Lorenzen is the short-yardage hammer behind guys like 305-pound Max Merz and 310-pound Mason Howard, he’s light and quick on his feet. Much the way his dad played. Only this Lorenzen is an inch taller and 30 pounds lighter than the 6-2, 260-pound sophomore he was a year ago.
“It feels a lot faster out there,” the slimmer Tayden says. “And I could probably lose 10 more.” Some of the credit, he says, goes to basketball. “It keeps me on my feet,” as a two-sport athlete.
Which is exactly the idea. Ask him what he’d call himself playing four positions in football as well as basketball. “An athlete,” he says. “He’s crazy,” Merz says of Lorenzen’s moves behind him, “crazy.”
And he’s not alone. Quarterback Rio Litmer completed 19 of 27 for 186 yards and a TD compared to the four-for-15 that Cooper star Cam O’Hara – headed to Western Kentucky as a Top 50 national quarterback – was able to put up against the Birds’ defense as he breaks in an all-new receiving corps.
“That quarterback (O’Hara) is really good,” Sphire said after finally getting the better of the record-breaking four-year starter. “I’m not unhappy to see him go. When he graduates, I hope he invites me to the party.”
And although Cooper had quick senior Keagan Maher racking up 133 yards with a TD and one 58-yard explosive run and two-way Ryker Campbell catching three passes for 60 yards and a TD, it just wasn’t enough.
“They’re still developing their schemes,” Sphire said of an 0-2 Cooper team that had reached the state championship game in Class 5A a year ago.
“We can’t get out of our way right now,” Borchers said of the early chances when Cooper just couldn’t connect. “We’ve got to figure out our identity.”
As far as Cooper goes with O’Hara off to a nine-for-28 passing start for just 119 yards in two games, “He’ll get there,” Borchers said. “He threw to some Division I receivers last year.” And now they’re all gone.
But Cooper has time, Borchers said although crosstown rival Ryle looms next week. The goal is to be ready come district play. “We’ve got three more weeks,” Borchers says.
As for 2-0 Highlands, “It’s kind of old-school football,” Sphire says of an offense when Lorenzen is running it that looks like the Birds stole the Amos Alonzo Stagg playbook.
But the Birds combine that with a possession passing game to six receivers that put up 186 yards and a TD led by John Feldbrugge’s 66 yards and the TD catch.
SCORING SUMMARY
Highlands 14 0 7 7—28
Cooper 7 0 0 7—14
Highlands: Feldbrugge 17 pass from Litmer (Anderson kick)
Highlands: Lorenzen 7 run (Anderson kick)
Cooper: Maher 5 run (Tibbs kick)
Highlands: Lorenzen 5 run (Anderson kick)
Highlands: Lorenzen (Anderson kick)
Cooper: Campbell 23 pass from O’Hara (Tibbs kick)