Improvement easy for Fenton to find
In a game like this the goal is simply to improve.
Fenton coach Mark Kos and his staff will determine that after viewing game film, but the scoreboard said plenty, a 55-12 victory over nonconference foe Walther Christian Friday in Bensenville.
Fenton (2-0) outgained Walther Christian unofficially 393 yards to minus-10. The Bison ran for 354 yards led by senior tailback Kyle McPherson and, when coach Mark Kos replaced his skill players with 4:38 left in the second quarter, Eric Lonergan.
McPherson gained 142 yards on only 7 carries. He scored touchdowns on 3 of his first 4 carries on runs of 24, 47 and 50 yards to craft a 35-12 lead after one quarter. McPherson added a fourth score from 7 yards out early in the second quarter.
He called the outing "a special feeling" and credited offensive linemen Josh Jakalski, Tom Lehman, Adam Benayad, Rodrigo Castaneda and David Echeverria.
"We had mega-push up front with the linemen, definitely," said the 6-foot-2, 205-pound McPherson. "We were moving guys around, I had huge holes to run through, it was definitely all linemen."
Walther Christian, spotting Fenton a 2-0 lead when it turned the opening kickoff into a safety, had two highlights. Corey Pugh returned a first-quarter kickoff 81 yards for a touchdown, and freshman quarterback William DeShazer Jr. bamboozled the defense on a fake reverse pass to a wide-open Kevin Smith for a 47-yard touchdown.
Broncos coach Bruce Tuomi said it was DeShazer's first completion of the season, and it was his last. Fenton sacked him four times, which along with a high punt snap for a 24-yard loss held Walther to minus-57 yards on the ground.
"We were just trying to get out there and try to recoup and rebuild on what we had done wrong the week before," said senior linebacker Spencer Woodlock, who had 2 sacks with a tackle for loss. "We fixed all our mental mistakes. We came out here and obviously the scoreboard said it itself."
Lonergan came in to run for 115 yards on 5 carries with a 5-yard touchdown on Fenton's last play of the first half and a 57-yard score on its first of the second half to start a running clock.
Matt Lucas bulldozed for 55 yards on 5 carries with a 1-yard touchdown blast; quarterback Willie Wassmann completed a 20-yard touchdown pass to Cody Quarles.
"We needed to clean up the mental mistakes, we did that, and now we get back into conference play," Kos said. "So we're looking forward to renewing some old rivalries, if you will, and looking forward to having to play even better if we're going to continue our success."