NAPPANEE – The first play from scrimmage was a beautiful play-action pass for 46 yards from senior Ryan Leiter to senior Gage Corner.
Here came another picturesque Leo victory, right?
Wrong.
The Lions won the Class 4A regional championship Friday with a 24-12 win over NorthWood, but this was not a masterpiece.
Case in point: Just after Corner’s reception, the ball was snapped over Leiter’s head and the Lions had to punt. Each team had two turnovers.
“Yeah, this was real sloppy. But we came to fight. We’ve had the will to win, and we got it done,” said Leo senior Taylor Horn, who rushed 12 times for 74 yards and recovered a fumble that set up senior Trevon Carr’s 26-yard touchdown run for a 7-0 lead.
Leo will face South Bend Washington in the semistate. Last year, the Lions lost to South Bend St. Joseph’s in a Class 3A semistate.
The Panthers stayed in it, though, because they were 4 for 4 on fourth downs in the first half, and because they got field goals from 25 and 30 yards by junior Brendan Widner.
But an interception late in the second half by Leo senior Joe Heath, who returned it 26 yards, set up the 1-yard touchdown run by Leiter that gave the Lions a 14-6 lead and seemed to sap NorthWood’s confidence.
“Joey did a great job bringing the ball in,” Horn said. “That put us in position for another touchdown and got us ahead a little bit. We kept it going from there.”
In the second half, the Lions got a 25-yard field goal from Alex Egan, a 19-yard touchdown pass from Leiter to Nolan Wilson for a 24-6 lead, and they stopped NorthWood on all three of its fourth-down attempts.
“We liked the fact that we were able to regroup and not let those early mistakes hurt us and hurt us,” Leo coach Jared Sauder said. “This was a very physical team, and we were able to play physically with them. … It was about telling our guys they had to play more physical in the second half. And we put NorthWood in four-down territory with those turnovers (in the first half), and those are tough to defend.”
Carr had 10 carries for 66 yards. Senior Mike Shawd had 15 carries for 83 yards. Leiter completed 7 of 10 passes for 114 yards and a touchdown with no interceptions.
“NorthWood did a great job taking away our pass game,” Sauder said. “Their secondary did a great job. We thought we could run the ball and we were able to, so that was good.”
NorthWood quarterback Zac Coleman completed 14 of 31 passes for 159 yards, a touchdown to Nick Graber and one interception. Coleman also rushed 11 times for 46 yards, while Coy Brown rushed 16 times for 36 yards.
