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Lake Central rolls past Crown Point
Updated: September 12, 2011 7:02PM
ST. JOHN — There’s nothing but mud between the hash marks on Lake Central’s field, nary a blade of grass to be found. It’s a sticky, soggy, swampy mess. It looks like the Inferno or the Boneyard come regional week. But it’s the Burial Grounds, and it’s only Week 4.
“That’s a sign that we’re doing some good things,” Indians coach Brett St. Germain said.
Indeed, there’s no secret to Lake Central’s offense. The Indians are going to line up and try to cram the ball right down your throat.
And so far, nobody can stop them.
Upstart Lake Central established itself as a genuine contender in the Duneland Conference on Friday night with a 26-7 manhandling of Crown Point.
The Indians racked up 270 rushing yards — almost all of it between the tackles, in that soupy brown bog — to back up their eye-opening 62-7 rout of Portage last week
“The middle of the field is all muddy, and it’s because we’re running up and down it,” said quarterback David Yancey, who ran for 178 yards and two long touchdowns and completed one pass for a 52-yard touchdown. “So I like it.”
The win puts Lake Central at 4-0 for the first time since 1992. Heck, the Indians won four games total over the past two seasons.
And it likely quelled any remaining doubters about just how good this team is.
“There’s a lot of talk, because this program hasn’t won in a while, so there’s all that speculation about whether we’re any good or not,” St. Germain said. “I don’t worry about that. What am I going to do about that? All I can do is make sure my kids show up every day and work hard.”
He appears to be doing just that. Despite the lopsided score against Portage last week, St. Germain wasn’t particularly pleased with how Yancey performed.
And he made sure his junior quarterback knew that.
“I did have a bad week,” Yancey said. “My passing game wasn’t good, I didn’t have many big runs, and I just didn’t play well Coach was on me all week, saying I had to be the hardest working kid in practice. So I went out and worked hard all week, I asked the coaches a lot of questions, and the outcome was great.”
No kidding.
On his first carry of the game, the 5-10, 200-pound battering ram showed terrific shiftiness and breakaway speed, slicing through the Crown Point defense and breaking away for a 48-yard touchdown run.
Later in the quarter, he broke loose for a 72-yard touchdown run to make it 13-0 Lake Central. And on the Indians’ following possession, he lofted his first pass of the game — a perfect strike to Dylan Morang for a 52-yard touchdown pass and a 20-0 lead.
“David’s obviously very gifted running the ball, and he’s working on his passing,” St. Germain said. “We’re glad to have him. I’ll take him.”
Meanwhile, LC’s defense was just as impressive, holding Crown Point to a three-and-out on its first three possessions. Two-way standout Chase Fieldhouse had two big pass breakups, Gelen Robinson was in quarterback Joe Hopman’s face all night, and Tyler Szczecina returned an interception 25 yards for the only score of the second half.
CP managed just 131 total yards of offense on the night. A lengthy, 69-yard touchdown drive — capped by a Jake Lindeman 13-yard run on fourth-and-2 (the third fourth-and-2 conversion of the drive for CP) was really the only time the Bulldogs (2-2, 0-2) managed to sustain any offense.
Crown Point coach Chip Pettit replaced Hopman with 6-4 sophomore Jake Jatis after the interception.
“Our defensive coaches have done a phenomenal job,” St. Germain said. “We have six defensive touchdowns through four games. I don’t really know the words to describe our defense and the type of things they’re doing.”
The Indians travel to LaPorte next week and host Michigan City the week after that before facing a brutal closing stretch — at Chesterton, home against Merrillville and at Valparaiso.
And for the first time in a long time, it looks like those three games are going to mean an awful lot.
“We came out with a chip on our shoulder, because people were saying they didn’t know whether LC was back or not,” Yancey said. “I think this game said a lot.
“Our offense is clicking, our defense is clicking — LC football is clicking.”
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