SPARTA – With the coronavirus pandemic lingering, Highland celebrated its seniors in football, cheerleading and band before the second game of the season against Fredericktown on Sept. 4.
But the celebration didn’t end there. Kadin Johnson ran for two touchdowns and threw for another to lead the Highland football team to a 28-0 win over the Freddies in Knox Morrow Athletic Conference play.
“Times are different,” the senior quarterback said. “We have to challenge ourselves to take what happens.”
Johnson opened the scoring by finding Landyn Albanese over the top on a post route for a 35-yard touchdown to give the Scots a 6-0 lead with 9:32 left in the first half.
“We’d been trying to hit that play all night … it came together in that moment,” Johnson said.
Fredericktown threatened on its last drive of the half. Ben Mast scrambled for 12 yards to move the chains on third down, and the Freddies picked up another first down on a roughing-the-passer penalty to get down to Highland’s 23-yard line. But Zack Vogelsang was wide right on a 34-yard field goal attempt as time expired in the half.
“We had field position on our side in the first half and we weren’t able to capitalize on that,” Fredericktown coach Will Hartley said. “We had those opportunities and we didn’t take advantage of them and it came back to haunt us in the second half.”
Johnson completed passes of 18 and 21 yards to Landon Remmert to set up a 17-yard touchdown run around right end by Dane Nauman on the Scots’ second possession of the third quarter. Nauman added the two-point conversion on a run up the gut to push Highland’s lead to 14-0 with 5:38 left in the third.
From there, the Scots wore down the Freddies. Jay Melchiori intercepted Fredericktown’s Ben Mast with a leaping catch at Highland’s 5-yard line.
Johnson broke a 25-yard run on third-and-1 to get the Scots out of the shadow of their own goal post. Cody Matthews carried six times for 47 yards to set up a Johnson 8-yard run. The 10-play, 95-yard drive pushed Highland’s lead to 22-0 with 7:47 remaining.
Johnson broke a 32-yard run to put the exclamation point on the game.
“We really opened it up in the second half and wore them down a little bit,” Highland coach Matt Jones said. “I’m proud of them and I’m proud of their effort tonight.”
Johnson finished with 115 yards on 14 carries to go with the two rushing scores. He added 95 yards on 8 of 20 passing with a touchdown.
Matthews added 70 yards on the ground on 10 carries for the Scots (1-1, 1-1), and Remmert caught four passes for 48 yards.
“We were balanced tonight,” Jones said. “We were able to throw the ball and we were able to run the ball a little bit. We were able to take advantage of some situations and some matchups. We were definitely happy with that aspect.”
Jon Jenson and Wyatt Hornsby led Highland with 7.5 tackles each.
“The defense was just lights-out tonight,” Jones said. “They did a great [job] on all fronts. That front three really started plugging up on the run and putting pressure on the pass.”
Mast threw for 99 yards and two interceptions on 12 of 19 passing. Steven Tumbleson rushed for 39 yards on 15 carries and Trevor Jobes had five tackles and an interception to lead the Freddies.
“We are inexperienced; we have a lot of new starters,” Hartley said. “Our quarterback is starting his second varsity game. So there’s going to be a large learning curve. There’s times where we go out and we execute on both sides of the ball and special teams. We just gotta be more consistent.
“As we were saying to the kids after the game: we gotta dig down and we gotta be a more physical team.”
