JULINGTON CREEK – Our second Game of the Week featured a show down between No. 2 Fruit Cove and No. 5 Landrum at Plantation Park. Only it was anything but a show down, as Fruit Cove turned a close first half into a running clock route in a 41-8 win at home.
Ahead 14-8 in the third quarter, Vincent Approbato quickly turned the game into a track meet racing 88 yards untouched to give the Flyers a 21-8 lead.
As any coach knows, defense wins championships and the Flyers last years No. 1 seed who was knocked off in the semi-finals, have a solid one led by the secondary.
From there it only got worse as the Flyers secondary picked off Landrum quarterback Bradley Eli three times in the second half to give the offense great field position thanks to Landon Frazier, Walter Stovall and Ryan Clodfelter interceptions.
Stovall’s interception led to Preston Stropes second touchdown of the day a 2-yard touchdown run increasing the lead to 28-8 in the third quarter.
Frazier’s big play set up quarterback Garrett Stewart’s 58 yard touchdown pass to Approbato across the middle on the ensuing play as the Flyers increased their lead to 35-8 in the fourth quarter.
Clodfelter’s pick set up Mana Wilhelm’s 2 yard touchdown run which closed out the scoring at 43-8 and forced a running clock late in the fourth quarter.
“We have a very balanced team and at any point we can switch it up and score from anybody else,” Fruit Cove coach JC Calhoun said. ” We actually had a couple players who were out due to injuries or other reasons, so we didn’t even have our full squad so it’s going to be better when those guys come back and play.”
For the second straight week, Fruit Cove (2-0) has putting a running clock on a team back-to-back weeks after opening the season with an easy 48-6 win over Valley Ridge last week, which might affect the mentality of the team with such easy wins something that concerns coach Calhoun.
“Yeah I have teams that have done this well before and what we worry about is them taking it easy, ” Calhoun said. “Today was a better test than Valley Ridge obviously, these guys (Landrum) are very well coached and very disciplined and it was just a matter of us adjusting to their offense, our defense really turned the game around for us. ”
When asked how the Flyers get out of the hump and make the championship game after losing in the semi-finals last season, Calhoun reacted.
“The main issue was we had a lot of key players get injured and this year we are managing injuries, I see anything like a injury he comes out immediately and I evaluate him and he sits out a few games as the first four games are not critical for us, but those last 5 games when everyone is tired or people are hurt that’s when I have to make sure they are healthy to the end of the season.”
Calhoun couldn’t remember who they play next week saying, ” We have to play whoever is on the field and that’s one of the key things we have to teach our kids, whoever shows up you have to play. I don’t even think about next week.”
That would be the Murray Bulldogs (1-1), who are coming off a 26-6 win over Pacetti Bay Wednesday, the two meet next Wednesday at 5 p.m. at Plantation Park.
