Experienced Indians race past Bulldogs

Published by admin on Mon, 07/13/2020 - 9:32am

WAUKON — Waukon senior Mitchell Snitker scored five touchdowns, lifting the Indians to a 56-0 victory over MFL MarMac Friday on opening night of the high school football season.

Snitker scored two rushing and two receiving touchdowns while also returning an interception to the house as the ninth-ranked Indians jumped to an early lead and never looked back.

“They have the thing that everybody wants, and that would be Mitch Snitker,” MFL MarMac coach Tom Oppelt said after the game. “Up front they have a ton of experience back.”

The returning second-team all-stater Snitker rushed for 146 yards on just three carries, including a sizzling 97-yard effort late in the first quarter. He also caught two of senior quarterback Abe Schwartz’s four touchdown passes. All told, Snitker finished with 214 yards of total offense on just five touches.

“We knew this one was going to be rough when we came up here,” Oppelt said. “We were thinking we would play a lot closer to them than we did, but there were some unfortunate events that took place. We gave them a few opportunities we shouldn’t have and we’ll learn from it, we’ll move on.”

MFL MarMac’s best success came on the ground. Oppelt was pleased with the mesh in his team’s backfield that saw the Bulldogs rush the ball effectively at times. Junior Dylan Corlett led the Bulldogs with 51 rushing yards while senior Derek Larson rushed for 44 yards. Junior quarterback Zach Trudo completed 6-of-18 passes for 50 yards while being intercepted three times.

“Our backfield mesh is amazing,” Oppelt said. “That’s the one thing that all the Waukon coaches had to say was that mesh was giving them fits because they didn’t know where the ball was or who had the ball. They’re athletic enough that they can recover and get to where they need to be to keep us at four- or five-yard gains whereas when we play other people, the other people we play we’ve been picking up 10, 15 yards.”

Read the full article in the Wednesday, August 30, 2017 edition of The Outlook.