Timberwolves Beat Trego in Regional Football Play

The South Central football team is moving on to the Sectional round of the Class 1A-I football playoffs after the Timberwolves beat Trego Community 38-28 at home Friday night.

While it was a close game throughout, head coach Brett Westrup said that the Timberwolves played a great game against a tough team.

“I was excited about that game because I knew that that was going to be a game that we were going to go four quarters, and we were going to have to play our best football to win,” Westrup said. “And, you know, the last couple weeks, we haven’t had to play very good even to win because we played some really bad teams.

“But I knew they (Golden Eagles) were going to be a good team and I was excited to see how the boys were going to (respond). We had to fight some adversity and that’s good.”

The head coach said that the Timberwolves had some penalties that he didn’t think were the right call but others that he described as mental mistakes. But he was happy with how the players fought through that and stayed in the game.

SCHS trailed 28-22 at halftime, but shut out the Golden Eagles in the second half while scoring twice. Westrup said the Timberwolves made some adjustments and played well in the second half.

He noted that Trego quarterback Vladon Crawford did a good job of running the ball. Westrup added that Trego used some motion on offense that challenged the Timberwolves defense.

“They would use motions and make us switch coverages and they were able to isolate some guys that got caught, people in the backfield and they caught a couple of really deep passes on us,” he said.

Jared Aschenbrenner caught three touchdown passes for the Golden Eagles. Westrup said the Timberwolves then played man coverage on Aschenbrenner and changed things to where the defenders weren’t simply watching the motions on offense.

“We just changed our coverage and we used a lineman to jam that guy at the line of scrimmage so he couldn’t get off free,” Westrup said.

The Timberwolves had 310 total yards of offense while Trego Community had 255 yards of total offense. The Golden Eagles had 178 yards passing to 113 for the Timberwolves, but SCHS had 197 yards rushing while TCHS had 77.

Easton Huck rushed for 112 yards on 22 carries with two touchdowns and completed 15 of 21 passes for 113 yards and two touchdowns. Coda Lindsay had 77 yards rushing for 11 yards and one touchdown. Dakota Thornesberry caught six passes for 60 yards and one touchdown and Parker Price caught six passes for 41 yards and one touchdown.

On defense, Colt Yoder had 14 tackles, four for a loss, Huck had eight tackles, John Willems had seventh tackles, two for a loss, Eli Girk had seven tackles and Thornesberry had six tackles, two for a loss. Willems had two quarterback sacks and Thornesberry and Girk each had one.

Westrup said he was happy to see the Timberwolves (10-0) come away with a win against a quality team.

“It’s always fun to win in the playoffs,” he said. “There’s no bad teams left this time of year. And so it was fun to go out there and compete and take down a good team — a good quality team that had a lot of big wins.”

Westrup added it may be the last home game for SCHS as well, because the Timberwolves will be on the road for Sectionals and will likely be on the road for Sub State if the Timberwolves get that far.

“It was good to be able to get a win at home in front of the fans,” Westrup said. “And I don’t like blowout wins. Blowout wins aren’t fun. You want those wins that, you know, you actually have to work for to earn. And that’s what this game was.”

SCHS will now face Wichita County this Friday at 6 p.m. The Indians are 10-0 for the season as well and beat Ell-Saline 46-24 in the Regional round of the playoffs.

“They’ve very disciplined,” Westrup said. “They have a whole bunch of formations with a whole lot of motions with not very many plays. They just use a lot of different looks to distract you to run the same thing over and over and over.”

He said it will be important for the SCHS defenders to stay at home and do their jobs, rather than worrying about the motions.

Westrup added that the Indians are a physical team but he didn’t know if they have been tested a lot this year. Wichita County rolled through District 8, shutting out Stanton County, Elkhart and Sublette and giving up just six points to South Gray.

The head coach added that he wouldn’t be surprised if the Indians are looking at what happened last year when the teams met up in Sectionals.

“We played them last year at home at our place and it was the same scenario, the Sectionals and we  won that game,” Westrup said. “And so they’re going to be out after us because we ended their season last year. So we’re looking forward to the challenge.”

He added that the Timberwolves have played well in road playoff games, so he expects the players will embrace the three-hour road trip and look to take care of business.

“We just got to get better at the little things.” Westrup said. “We’ve got to fix the mental mistakes that we had this week with the penalties and the missed reads on defense, missed blocks. We just got to get better at the small things and let the big things take care of themselves.”

Westrup said that practice is challenging now that it gets dark sooner, so the Timberwolves will have to be efficient with practice time, from stretching to individual drills to team drills.