Bath’s Preston Young brings down Shawnee’s Jordan Banks during Friday night’s game at Shawnee.
Jackelyn Johnson I The Lima News
Shawnee christened its new scoreboard and turf field with a 17-7 victory over Bath in the Western Buckeye League on Friday night.
The Indians improved to 1-1 on the season and Bath falls to 0-2 on the year.
Shawnee head coach Jerry Cooper said it wasn’t pretty and the Indians have plenty of work still to do if they are going to continue to rack up victories.
“We played as ugly as can be,” Cooper said. “You can’t believe how many penalties and formation penalties we had. We had several self-inflicted wounds. We had all those formation busts and special teams busts and we practice that all the time.
“We had probably had eight special teams plays and we didn’t have the right personnel on the field. That is inexcusable and that is on us. Hey, give Bath credit they played hard. That game was ugly but it is better to win ugly than lose.”
Shawnee’s defense helped pave the way to the win as the Indians shutdown Bath’s offense.
The Indians limited Bath to 172 total yards.
“We are searching and looking for players to step up,” Bath head coach Ryan Reindel said. “We couldn’t execute tonight. We couldn’t make plays and we didn’t play very well offensively. We were on the field a long time defensively and our guys would make plays and then we would make a bust and they would hit a big play.”
Cooper pointed out that he said the defense held tough but did miss some open field tackles and that will be another area the Indians must work on.
“We just have to clean stuff us,” Cooper said. “We just have to play better football and I expect them to do that.”
In the first half, Bath never made it past the Shawnee 42 yard line.
Bath, who did not score last week, finally got its first touchdown of the season when Mickey Hale scored for 11 yards out with 3:30 left in the game.
Shawnee’s offense still struggled to gain any real consistency but came up with some big plays to score points. The Indians were limited to seven points last week.
Shawnee’s Jordan Banks was the main weapon in the ground game as he picked up 165 yards on 22 carries and one touchdown and he showed off his big play capability when he ran one in from 40 yards out in the third quarter. Banks’ big run put Shawnee up 17-0 in the third quarter.
“I thought Banks ran hard and thought the offensive line blocked really well,” Cooper said.
Indian quarterback Dominic Lynch was 8 for 17 for 50 yards in the air.
Shawnee’s first big play led to the Indians’ taking a 7-0 lead in the first quarter. Facing a third and five from their own 5-yard line, gave the ball to Chase Beery on what appeared to be a jet sweep. But instead of running, Beery stopped, spotted Keegan Wilson, who got behind the Bath defense, and Berry hit him with the pass with Wilson outracing the opposition to complete the 95-yard touchdown play.
Shawnee kicker Tyler Kimmel was successful on a 31-yard field goal in the first quarter that led to the Indians first points of the game.
