Early outburst carries Trojans past Tigers

TEKAMAH — The Cedar Catholic Trojans got back to what they know how to do Friday — winning football games.

The Trojans bounced back Friday from a tough, week two loss to Battle Creek with a resounding 48-6 win at Tekamah-Herman. Cedar used a 34-point second-quarter explosion to put away its hosts.

Neither team was able to get much going on their first drive of the night, as both teams were forced to punt early.

The Trojans found success on their next drive, though, finding the endzone with 6:20 left in the first frame after Easton Becker found a seam and rumbled 12 yards for the score.

The Trojans looked to be on the scoring path again early in the second frame, but Becker lost the football on the 24 yardline and the Tigers’ Reece Williams scooped it up and raced 74 yards to the endzone to put the home team on the board.

It was all Cedar after that as the Trojans put 34 unanswered points on the board to take a 40-6 lead into the halftime break.

“I felt like we had a very balanced effort on Friday night on the offensive side of the ball,” Cedar head coach Chad Cattau said. “We got multiple people carries and touches in the game which really makes it difficult to stop because then they can’t key on one person. We were able to get five different players carries in the first half and that really helped keep the kids fresh in the hot weather.”

The game was kicked off at 85 degrees and forced the Trojans to play a number of kids to win the war of attrition against Mother Nature.

“Our depth played a major role as the game went on,” Cattau said. “If we can continue to play a lot of kids and have the balance on offense that we had on Friday, we will be a difficult matchup for teams. We have a lot of things that we still need to improve on, but we will continue to work on those things and get better at them.”

Tate Thoene went 9-for-17 passing for 185 yards and four touchdown passes, two each to Carter and Grant Arens. Carter Arens caught six passes for 106 yards.

Brett Kleinschmit (eight carries, 75 yards, a touchdown), Easton Becker (eight carries, 45 yards, one touchdown), Thoene (seven carries, 39 yards) and Ty Thoene (five carries, 34 yards) did the bulk of the running.

“Defensively we did a lot of very good things,” Cattau said. “I thought overall we did a good job of tackling throughout the game. They run a balanced attack between their passing and run game, and our kids were in the right position most of the night.

“We were able to knock down a lot of passes and that made it hard for them to ever get things going in the passing game. We need to build off of that effort and continue to make improvements.”

Grant Arens said that the keys to the Trojans win stem from finding the rhythm again after the loss and staying focused on each individual’s job and not worrying about everyone else’s.

“We focused all week on ourselves and getting better to bounce back from the loss,” he said. “We dominated on the line of scrimmage and that was the difference. Our line gave us more time to throw the ball and bigger holes to run the ball through.

“We feel pretty good still: Last week’s loss didn’t affect us much since they are out of our class. It happened in week two and not week nine. We just need to figure ourselves out and find our strengths and weaknesses.”

Grant Arens said the team is very close and have a good understanding of each other.

“I don’t think we took much of the loss to heart in week two,” he said. “We are sitting right where we want to be. We bounced back pretty good.”

The Trojans will play host to David City on Friday.

“The past two seasons they have really given us all we could handle,” Cattau said. “We know they will play hard, so we need to be ready to go. They run a variety of formations and they will try to balance their run and pass game against us.”

Early in the season, they ran more of a run base offense but this past week they threw it more than they have been so we will need to be prepared for both.

“Defensively, they will throw some stuff at us that we haven’t seen yet this season so we will need to spend a lot of time preparing for that. I really feel our kids will push themselves to get better at practice and continue to make improvements to prepare us for this game.”

Cedar 6 34 8 0 —48

Tekamah-Herman 0 6 0 0 — 6

PASSING

Cedar - Tate Thoene, 9-17-185.

RUSHING

Cedar - Brett Kleinschmit, 8-75; Easton Becker, 8-45; Tate Thoene, 7-39; Ty Thoene, 5-34; James Christensen, 4-15; Andrew Jones, 2- -6.

RECEIVING

Cedar - Carter Arens, 6-106; Grant Arens, 2-53; Jaxson Bernecker, 1-26.

TACKLES

Cedar - Hunter Thoene, 4.5; Spencer Albers, 3.5; Keaton Steffen, 3; Jaelen Lammers, 2.5; Tate Thoene, 2.5; Jaxson Bernecker, 2; Ty Thoene, 2; Brett Kleinschmit, 1.5; Conner Hochstein, 1.5; Carson Arens, 1.5; James Christensen, 1.5; Ethan Becker, 1.5; Grant Arens, 1; Jay Steffen, 1; Carter Arens, 1; Owen Dendinger, 1; Jamison Cattau, 1; Mathew Loecker, 1; Tyan Baller, 1; Jack Christensen, 1; Easton Becker, .5; Andrew Jones, .5; James Fischer, .5; Logan Eickhoff, .5; Weston Heine, .5; Max Steffen, .5; Karsan Albers, .5; Cole Benson, .5; Keyton Arens, .5; Paul Kleinschmit, .5; Braeden Kleinschmit, .5

Stay in the know!

To get news alerts on your cell phone, get the Cedar County News app in the ITunes store or  in the Google Play Store.