Manta Rays Start Quickly, Roll Over Gateway Charter

Posted by Nancy Guenther Chapman on September 4th, 2010 at 1:00 am

Sub­mit­ted by Rich Spedaliere

Andrew Schulte was Lemon Bay’s top offen­sive weapon last year. He started Friday’s game with a thrilling 65-yard sprint.

The Lemon Bay Manta Rays foot­ball team has endured many nights over the past six years where they were not the best team on the field, but that was not the case Fri­day night in Fort Myers. Andrew Schulte raced 65 yards down the left side­line on the first play of scrim­mage as the Man­tas rolled 40–19 over the Gate­way Char­ter Griffins at Buck­ing­ham Com­mu­nity Park.

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In fact, Lemon Bay (1−0) scored touch­downs on their first four pos­ses­sions in the first quar­ter, includ­ing a 55-yard touch­down pass from Quar­ter­back Mike Messina to Tight End John Hecker. Touch­down runs of 1-yard by Damon John­son and 7-yards by Jacob Sparks helped the Man­tas to a 27–0 lead, but a lack­lus­ter sec­ond quar­ter and a long touch­down drive to start the third quar­ter brought the Griffins (0−1) to within 27–12 with 5:49 left in the third quarter.

Lemon Bay senior Damon John­son tries to find run­ning room in last week’s abbre­vi­ated 2010 Kick­off Clas­sic against Char­lotte High.

That’s when Lemon Bay put together a 60-yard drive, 30 yards of which came on per­sonal foul and unsports­man­like con­duct penal­ties on the same play. Lemon Bay hurt them­selves with penal­ties, includ­ing an ille­gal motion penalty on an Andrew Schulte touch­down run, but on 2nd and 23 from the 33, Schulte took a reverse hand-off from Jacob Sparks and ran down the left side­line, bowl­ing over the last would-be tack­ler at the 20 on his way to pay­dirt. That made it 33–12 and basi­cally ended the com­pet­i­tive por­tion of the con­test. The Man­tas got the ball back fol­low­ing a Jacob Lipp inter­cep­tion and method­i­cally moved down the field before Jacob Sparks scored the sec­ond of his two touch­downs on a 15 yard run around right end.

Trent Row­ley added the point after to com­plete the Lemon Bay scoring. The Manta Rays defense force three turnovers, with Glen Elli­son get­ting an inter­cep­tion off of a deflec­tion and a fum­ble recovery. Lemon Bay returns to action next Fri­day night in their home opener against the Bishop Verot Vikings, who beat Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian 41–6 Fri­day night. Kick­off is set for 7 p.m. at Vet­er­ans Stadium.

Box Score:

Lemon Bay           27−0−6−7    40

Gate­way Char­ter 0−6−6−7      19

Scor­ing

First Quar­ter

LB—Andrew Schulte 65 yard run (run failed)

LB—Damon John­son 1 yard run (kick blocked)

LB—Jacob Sparks 7 yard run (Tay­lor run)

LB—John Hecker 55 pass from Mike Messina (Trent Row­ley kick)

Sec­ond Quarter

GC—Andrew Thomas 10 yard run (run failed)

Third Quar­ter

GC—Thomas 1 yard run (run failed)

LB—Schulte 33 yard run (kick failed)

Fourth Quar­ter

LB—Sparks 15 run (Row­ley kick)

GC—Shaquille Jones 50 yard fum­ble return (Drake Sallin kick)

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