Sports
Easley and Kimbrough Help Spartans Roll Past Lancers In Week One
By: Ethan Sands
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The Alexanders Spartans quarterback stepped up when his team needed him to produce the most against the Federal Hocking Lancers as the Spartans rolled to a dominating victory, 52-8.
The Lancers had a slow start that set the tone for them for the rest of the game as they had received penalties against them in the first two minutes of the game that put them back to their own 20 yard-line to start the game.
The run game was not an effective way of gaining yardage for the Lancers as they only had 72 yards on the ground on 13 attempts in the first half.
In comparison, Alexander’s quarterback Kaleb Easley had 75 yards rushing on 13 carries with two touchdowns by the end of the second quarter.
Alexander had 262 yards in the first half with 208 coming from the ground and Federal Hocking totaled four.
Though it may have seemed as if the passing game was more effective in yards for the Lancers, in the first half both the run game and the air assault tallied only one first down. The Lancers had a total of 10 yards total in the half until running back Mason Brown broke off an 18 yard run.
Though the offense of Fed Hock was stifled by the aggression of Alexander, as the Spartans penetrated the backfield on multiple occasions making it hard for Hunter Smith to even breathe as the pocket seemed to always collapse on him.
The defensive approach mimicked that of the offense for the Spartans as there was a “leave no prisoners” attitude. The confidence was exuding itself into all the players as defense led to offense and everyone wanting to have a piece of the action.
A prime example of this is when Michael Kelly intercepted a pass from 20 yards out of his end zone and waltzed in, untouched. Not even 30 seconds later, Landon Hornsby recovered a fumble which was followed up by a three yard run from Easley to push their score to 40 before the half.
The Lancers had the hope of coming into the second half with a new attitude, but that was quickly diminished by a 52 yard run from Connor Kimbrough. With this run, he had 112 rushing yards after being sidelined to cramps early in the second quarter.
The second half was more of the same for Fed Hock with a bright spot in a 37 yard touchdown pass from Noah Robinson to Hunter Smith and then a two-point conversion from Robinson to Owen Roark.
All in all, the Spartans proved dominant for the 9th straight year with some impressive leadership from Easley and Kimbrough who totaled over 200 rushing yards between the two of them, alone.