By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Sometimes it happens like this. Two teams evenly matched in an opener are deadlocked 14-14 with a little more than a minute left in the third quarter. Covington Catholic at Ryle in front of a capacity crowd of more than 4,000 in Union was about to come down to the wire, it seemed.
“And then the wheels came off,” CovCath Coach Ed Eviston said with a shake of the head. “We had our opportunities.”
So did a veteran Class 6A Ryle team playing in front of a loud beach-themed Raider crowd. One difference: Ryle made the most of its opportunities. And CovCath, well the Colonels didn’t, while making more mistakes, starting with nine penalties for 90 yards with two of those wiping out big gains.
But the biggest problem for the Colonels, who won their first 14 games last season all the way into the Class 4A state championship game: “Our mistakes led to direct scores for them,” Eviston said of the two bad snaps over the quarterback’s head into the end zone in the fourth quarter.
One produced a touchdown for the opportunistic Raiders, as surehanded senior Landon Lorms pounced on it for the wide receiver/safety’s second TD of the game after an earlier one-handed circus catch TD tip-toeing down the sideline past defenders in the second quarter. The other bad snap into the end zone turned into a safety.
From that 14-14 tie more than three minutes into the final quarter, Ryle’s Raiders racked up a quick final 16 points starting with middle-linebacker-turned-running-back Jacob Savage’s blazing 20-yard TD blast through the middle of the line that had the Colonels getting only fingernails on the 6-1 ½, 220-pounder who plays up to his name on both sides of the ball. The junior who is being recruited by Louisville, Indiana, Miami (Ohio), Eastern Kentucky and getting interest from the likes of UK and West Virginia said that “this season I’ve taken on a bigger role on offense,” as his 87 yards on 14 carries (a 6.2 average with a long gain of 51 yards).
“I’ve really worked on my speed,” Savage says, with a best time of 4.6 seconds in the 40-yard dash. That speed made life so tough on CovCath quarterback/safety Cash Harney, the game’s leading rusher with 95 yards on 11 carries (an 8.6 average) with a 14-yard scramble for the game’s first TD.
But a couple of times Harney was crushed to the ground by Savage and like so many players in this game where the temperature at kickoff was 86 degrees, Harney pulled up with leg cramps and was spelled in the second half by both running back Dylan Gaiser and sophomore Emmitt Queen, who combined to finish 11 of 21 passing for 72 yards. It was Gaiser’s 23-yard perfectly lobbed TD toss to 6-foot-5 basketballer Donovan Bradshaw who was just too tall and too strong a jumper to be defended by the Raiders who were right there with him.
And that’s when it looked like this one could come down to one big play at the finish. Turns out there were three of them, all for Ryle scores – one by Savage and two by the Colonels who gave up the final nine points with those two bad snaps.
But credit a veteran Ryle defense, with 10 starters back, for pushing the Colonels back to their own goal line. Savage said credit the Ryle coaches, especially for the half-time adjustments.
“They put our athletes into a lot of good places to succeed.”
“A nice way to start,” Ryle Coach Mike Engler said with a smile. “That’s what happens when you return a lot of seniors.”
Or when you don’t, as Eviston said of how CovCath was “asking a lot of guys who haven’t played to do a whole lot.”
On this night, the offensive edge went to Ryle, with 14 first downs and 234 total yards to CovCath’s 12 first downs and 188 total yards. The defenses were pretty even with Ryle’s one fumble recovery equaled by CovCath’s one interception.
Ryle would have had a lost fumble of its own but new quarterback, Nathan Verax – younger brother of last year’s starter Logan Verax – who had the ball knocked loose in the third quarter with three Colonels getting to it first somehow watched the quick Verax beat them to it. “How’d he do that?” one Colonel on the sideline asked another.
Engler likes the way Verax, a junior, is a quick study.
“He gets better every play,” his coach said.
Verax rushed for 23 yards on seven carries and hit on 12 of 18 passing for 75 yards with that one TD pass and one INT.
“This is definitely something to build on,” Engler said. “That’s a good football team (CovCath) and when they win eight or nine games, it’ll give us a lot of RPI points.”
Not that it’s going to be easy for a young CovCath team that faces a Highlands team next week coming off a 17-7 win over Lexington Catholic. Ryle will face county rival Conner, a 42-15 winner at Lexington Paul Laurence Dunbar Friday.
“We’ll just get back to work,” Eviston said of the challenge ahead for his Colonels.
SCORING SUMMARY
Quarter 1 2 3 4 Final
RYLE 0 7 7 16—30
COVCATH 0 7 7 0—14
COVC: Harney 14 run (Weitzel kick good)
RYLE: Lorms 6 pass from Verax (Moses kick good)
RYLE: Verax 2 run (Moses kick good)
COVC: Bradshaw 23 pass from Gaiser (Weitzel kick good)
RYLE: Savage 20 run (Moses kick good)
RYLE: Lorms fumble recovery TD (Moses kick good)
RYLE: Bad snap through end zone for safety