It’s been a season of adversity for Lake football.
The Hornets faced Newton in Friday’s game at Morgan Field, the winner of which would advance to the playoffs. This time, Lake rose to the occasion and pounded Newton 38-8 to clinch a playoff berth.
Hornet coach Tate Hanna said it was important not only to get into the playoffs, but to just get another win after Lake had lost three straight district games.
“These kids work too hard, they bust their butt in practice,” Hanna said. “People don’t understand the things they do every day. They work their tail off. We put in eight to 10 hours.
“I think the biggest thing that we were missing is that we weren’t playing as a team. We finally got back to playing as a team tonight like we were doing earlier in the year. And everyone wasn’t worried about me, worried about themselves. Like a preach to them all the time, ‘we’ are better than ‘me.’ We’ve got to get back to playing ‘we’ ball.”
On the other side, Newton coach Zack Grady saw his team improve from tough losses at the beginning of the season, but the Tigers just couldn’t get anything going.
“That’s been the story of our season,” Grady said. “We just haven’t been getting any consistency all season. We just try to pack it up and try to get these seniors situated with scholarships. And then go right into our offseason.
“I really feel like missing our offseason this summer really hurt us. As far as our strength and conditioning, you could tell that teams were a lot stronger and better conditioned than us. I think if we can get into our offseason program, that will really help us get things going for next season.”
After a slow first quarter, Lake jumped out to a 23-0 lead in the second quarter thanks to a few big plays. D’Alex Jennings raced 15 yards for a touchdown moments into the second quarter. Mickey Parker added extra point.
On the next Newton possession, a bad snap caused the Newton quarterback to step on the end line of the end zone for a safety.
Danarrious Hughes intercepted a Newton pass, which set up Parker’s 73-yard touchdown pass to Zywon Ledbetter at the 2:06 mark of the quarter.
Jennings had a pick to set up Parker’s 19-yard touchdown pass to Kolin Ramzi 23 seconds later.
Jennings then capped a 14-play, 53-yard touchdown drive with a 5-yard run.
Theory Harris added the final Lake touchdown on a 1-yard run moments into the fourth quarter.
Lawrence Morris got Newton on the board with a 1-yard touchdown run. Senior Tre Hillie added the two points to make the score 36-8.
As the clock was running out, Newton had a punt snap go out of the end zone for a safety.
