By Damian Juneau
Special to the American Press

Ethan Guidry returned the game’s opening kickoff sparking a three-touchdown first quarter and the North Vermilion Patriots never looked back in taking a 52-21 victory over the Washington-Marion Charging Indians Friday night in a District 4-4A game.

The Patriots recovered the onside kick and set up shop at the W-M 36-yard line. Guidry scored his second touchdown of the quarter on a 6-yard run for a 14-0 lead with 7:19 to play in the quarter.

North Vermilion (2-6, 1-1) increased its lead to 21-0 when RJ Lemay scored with 4 seconds to play in the quarter.

“Momentum is huge in high school football and we had it early,” said North Vermilion head coach Brett Blakey. “They are a really good team. The score doesn’t indicate the differences in teams as we were really worried about the speed and the size that they brought to the table.”

W-M (3-4, 0-2) got going in the second quarter. Ray Thomas scored his first touchdown of the quarter on a 44-yard run with 11:05 to play. W-M cut the lead to 21-14 when Thomas scored his second touchdown with 3:33 to play in the quarter.

The Patriots answered with two scores before halftime. The first was a Tucker Denais 49-yard run for a score. The final touchdown was a 9-yard run by Benny Freeman 42 seconds before the half.

The Charging Indians mounted a comeback in the third quarter with a Derrick Paul 6-yard scoring run with 6:40 remaining only to see the Patriots respond when Freeman scored on a 2-yard run.

W-M struggled to get anything going in the second half. The Charging Indians were unable to get any scoring after the initial drive in the opening of the second half and had several drives stall out.

North Vermilion finished with 214 rushing yards and 48 passing yards. Leading the way on the ground was Freeman and Denais who finished with 83 and 81 yards, respectively.

“Our defense made some adjustments in halftime and did a better job in the second half,” Blakely said. “Offensively we have slowly been improving and week after week we have become better in the run game, and it showed tonight.”

W-M was limited to 143 rushing yards and 41 passing yards. Thomas finished with 106 yards on nine carries.

“Adversity was something our kids just didn’t know how to overcome as it was the first time for some of our kids to play in two or three years,” said W-M head coach Jules Sullen. “Our goal is to come back next week try our best to finish strong so we can have an opportunity to be in the top 32,” he said referring to the playoff seedings.