DOVER – In what was the Sagamore Conference opener for both teams, Western Boone set the tone of the game against the Crawfordsville Athenians on the games very first play. Stars quarterback Elliot Young connected with Garrett Morton on a 44-yard touchdown and Crawfordsville was never able to recover as Western Boone dominated the Athenians 49-6.
“Their offense has been really explosive when we’ve watched them on film,” Crawfordsville coach Kurt Schlicher said. “They hit you in both the run and pass game and that first play We knew they were going to give us problems and I think they going to give many more teams problems the rest of the season.”
Coming off a 28-26 loss to Western last week, Western Boone wanted to get off on the right foot in conference play. Coach Justin Pelley knows that in a conference like the SAC, every win matters.
“I was proud of our guys tonight,” he said. “I was anxious to see how they would respond after a tough loss last week. We talked about how if we come out and play like we should then we’ll be fine and should win.”
“I admire Coach Schlicher and the players that Crawfordsville has,” Pelley added. “To come out and give it their all despite what their record is tough to do every week. They play hard and as a football coach that’s all you can ask.”
The Stars scored on all seven of their first half possessions excluding a kneel to end the half to take a 49-0 lead into the locker room. Young, who played just the first half completed eight of his nine pass attempts for 173 yards and three touchdowns.
“He’s a very underrated player,” Schlicher said of Young.
“He’s a very slippery player at that position and can make some people miss,” Pelley said of his senior signal caller. “The most dangerous quarterbacks are guys who can make something happen when a play breaks down and sometimes you just have to let Elliot go out there and make a play.”
The lone Athenian touchdown came on their first drive of the third quarter when Sophomore wide-out Ethan McLemore hauled in a 17-yard score from Kaiden Underwood. Just a few plays before, McLemore got the Athenians into the red zone by hauling a 50/50 for over 40 yards. He ended the game catching four passes for 69 yards.
“You can see that his confidence is starting to come back after missing all of last year,” Schlicher said. “We’re going to need him to play at a high level like he did tonight because he’s a dangerous player and a guy who can make plays for us.”
The task doesn’t get any easier for Crawfordsville (0-3, 0-1 SAC) as they will host Danville next Friday.
“We know where we stand in the conference,” Schlicher said. “Teams don’t lack confidence when they play us and moving forward we’re trying to change that.”
