(Malvern) East Mills travels to Audubon in an 8-Player playoff matchup that will air on KSOM Friday night.
Momentum has been building for East Mills as the Wolverine football team has won four straight including avenging a regular season loss to Lenox in the first round of the playoffs. Co-head coach Kevin Schafer comments on what has changed from the team’s 1-3 start. “Jackson Wray has come a long way at quarterback. Early in the season he was more of just a runner and now he’s really become more proficient in the passing game. Our biggest improvement has been on defense. We are getting more three and outs, stopping teams when they go for it on fourth down, and getting better field position so we don’t have to drive the length of the field. Our special teams has been pretty solid all season long.” He describes Ryan Stortenbecker as an all-state caliber kicker with field goal range up to about 45 yards.
Last week’s playoff win against Lenox was a lot tighter than the final score showed, but Schafer explains a lot of things went right for his team late in the game against a Tiger squad that hadn’t played in three weeks. East Mills trailed 16-14 going into the 4th. “They pushed us around pretty good the first half. The second half we scored one touchdown in the third quarter and held them scoreless. We had some big plays in the fourth quarter.” In fact, the Wolverines scored TD’s on offense, defense, and special teams to inflate the final margin.
East Mills is a rare exception in this area of the state for 8-Player football of a team that hasn’t had to miss a single week of football and they’ve benefited from that. “Lenox I think some of their problems were conditioning. They were out of school for two weeks with no practice. As good as they looked in the first half, they did not push us around in the second half. I think that made a huge difference.” East Mills had to fill their scheduled with Pattonsburg, MO in Week 7. “We were fortunate to play Pattonsburg and we were glad they were a pass happy team. It wasn’t a physical game. We got good conditioning and had a lot of time covering passes. It wasn’t a game where it was physical and we were beat up on Monday and Tuesday. It was a perfect type of game for that time of year.”
Audubon is an entirely different challenge and coach Schafer is certainly impressed by what the Wheelers have done this season. “When you have a quarterback completing 75% with 32 completions and 17 have gone for touchdowns that’s just crazy. Then they have a 154 rushes and 31 of them, so about 20%, have been touchdowns. I’ve never seen numbers like this before.”
A lot of the personnel has changed, but these teams met up in Week 0 last year and Audubon won 61-26. East Mills is led by a dual threat quarterback. Jackson Ray has thrown for 1,030 yards this season and run for 751. He’s accounted for 32 offensive scores.
