DUKE CENTER – “That one was for my grandma.”
That’s how Kane running back Erik DeLong summed up his Allegheny Mountain League title game performance after the recent passing of his grandmother, running for a season-best 254 yards as the Wolves knocked off upset-minded Otto-Eldred, 37-26, to win the league crown.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever been more proud of a player that I’ve coached than I am of Erik tonight,” Kane head coach Todd Silfies said. “He had a really rough week. For him to do what he had to do today and then come out here tonight and put the on show that he put on on both sides of the ball, you just sort of have a feeling because there’s more to it than anyone can imagine.
“There’s powers out there from above. Erik is a tough kid and he had a little extra help tonight I think.”
DeLong carried 33 times and scored three touchdowns, two of which came on the ground in the fourth quarter after a Dylan Close nine-yard touchdown brought the Wolves’ lead to just 24-19. The junior scored from four yards out then put the game on ice with a 38-yard scamper with under four minutes left to keep the AML champion’s plaque in Kane for the second-straight year.
The win is the sixth AML championship for Kane (10-0), the third in Silfies’ tenure.
“I told the guys since I was 14 years old, I’ve been chasing this plaque around,” said Silfies, an Elk Catholic graduate. “Once we get it, we don’t want to give it back. It hurt an awful lot a couple years ago when we had to give it back. The idea that we were able to keep it and do what it took tonight, that’s all there is to it.”
The win also completes the fifth undefeated regular season in school history, with three having now come on Silfies’ watch.
“We go out every year and you never really talk about winning them all, just about winning the next one,” Silfies said. “The reason we’re able to do it is because our players and our coaches take such an incredible week-to-week approach so you can’t get caught. You’re going to play some good games against some good teams like we did tonight, but it’s just a credit to the maturity of our players, the intelligence of our players and just the high-quality assistant coaches that I have.”
Kane drove into Otto-Eldred territory on the game’s first drive, but unlike the team’s first meeting of the season, which ended in a 42-7 win for Kane, the Terrors came up with a big interception of Wolves’ quarterback Reed Williams. The Terrors also stopped another long Kane drive when Damen Palmer was in the right spot at the right time, picking off a deflected pass off the fingertips of the Wolves’ Davis Gardner at the five-yard line before racing down the sideline to Kane’s 20.
Those interceptions were part of the big plays that Terrors coach Nick LaBella said would be key for his team to win.
“We got the big interception return and a big pick early,” LaBella said. “We completed some passes, made some guys miss and turned them into big plays. They just get up and pressure you so much that if you can complete a couple and break a tackle here or there, you can take off a little bit.”
The Terrors did just that when quarterback Sawyer Drummond found Dylan Close for a 27-yard touchdown just minutes after Kane’s Joseph Johnson kicked a 24-yard field goal. That brought the score to 24-12, and then LaBella called for an onsides kick, which his team recovered.
Drummond then found Close for another touchdown to shrink Kane’s lead to just five at 24-19.
With the lead dwindling, Kane was able to rally around DeLong, who had second-half runs of 53, 17 and 38 yards.
“We were just thinking this isn’t how we play,” DeLong said as the lead got smaller. “We gotta get going. We started to pick it up a little bit and got back in the swing of things.”
Close finished with 13 catches for 171 yards and three touchdowns, while fellow wideout Grant West had 87 yards on four catches, including a 46-yard touchdown in the second quarter.
“He made some guys miss out there,” LaBella said. “Grant was out there as a huge decoy. I think they were always shifting their defense to where he was.”
The Terrors 26 points are the most amount scored on the Wolves this season, who came into the game giving up an average of about seven points per game.
“Otto played fantastic,” Silfies said. “They had a game plan. Their kids played their hearts out. My hat’s off to them, but our guys were able to respond to some pretty significant adversity throughout the game and I’m really proud of them for that.”
Otto-Eldred (5-5) may have had a chance to pounce on the Wolves early in vulnerable positions, but weren’t able to capitalize. The Terrors fumbled three times – once off a punt, on a kickoff return and quarterback-center exchange the very next play after Palmer’s interception with the ball at Kane’s 20.
“Our kids played great,” LaBella said. “Just those early turnovers. We probably had a chance to maybe jump out ahead of them. We didn’t give anything up. We fought the whole time.”
Both teams return to action next week in the District 9 playoffs, with the Terrors likely competing as the sixth or seventh seed in the Class A bracket, while the No. 1 seed Wolves will host Moniteau (3-5) in Class AA.
SCORE BY QUARTER
Kane 7 7 10 14 – 37
Otto-Eldred 0 6 13 7 – 26
TEAM STATISTICS
Rushing Yards: Kane 44-269, Otto-Eldred 16-13; Passing Yards: Kane 10-15-181, Otto-Eldred 21-30-232; Total Yards: Kane 450, Otto-Eldred 245
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Passing: Kane: Reed Williams: 10-15-181-2-2. Otto-Eldred: Sawyer Drummond: 21-30-232-4-1.
Rushing: Kane: Erik DeLong: 33-254-3, Ange Costanzo 4-13, Austin Labesky 2-1, Williams 2-1, Frank Truden 3-0. Otto-Eldred: Seth Drummond 11-18, Sawyer Drummond 5-(-5).
Receiving: Kane: Ray Maze 4-113-1, Davis Gardner 2-33, Issac Walters 2-16-1, DeLong 2-10-1, Truden 1-9. Otto-Eldred: Dylan Close 13-171-3, Grant West 4-87-1, Gage Babcock 2-23, Seth Drummond 1-9, Garret Babcock 1-8.
