How fitting that the mascot of Concord High School's football team is the Minutemen.
Benefiting from a number of Warsaw miscues, Concord scored early and often, as the Minutemen cruised to a 55-6 win over the host Tigers at Fisher Field Friday night in the final game of the regular season.Though his team was without the services of eight starters, including running back Andy Conrad and defensive standouts Tom Daniels and Brenden Barber, Warsaw coach Phil Jensen didn't make excuses after the game.
"No excuses," said Jensen, whose Tigers closed the regular season with a 5-4 mark overall and a 3-4 record in the Northern Lakes Conference. "We got beat by a great football team. Concord has great athletes. They're very well-coached and they run their offense well."
Concord scored on its first seven possessions, led 49-0 at halftime and closed out the regular season with an overall mark of 8-1 and a conference record of 6-1.
"I'm proud of our team," said Concord coach Tim Dawson. "We didn't know Warsaw had that many guys hurt. They were pretty banged up. I'm proud of my guys, we still had to show up and play hard."
The Minutemen still had ideas of earning a share of the NLC championship, but NorthWood fell 28-6 at Plymouth.
Plymouth improved to 9-0 and finished the NLC schedule with a 7-0 mark, while Concord finished second and NorthWood third with a 5-2 mark.
Plymouth beat Concord 27-25 in Dunlap on Oct. 3. The two teams will square off Friday at Plymouth in the first round of sectional play.
"It's unfortunate that they have to play each other next week," Jensen said of Concord and Plymouth. "I have a lot of respect for both programs. I'd love to see both of them go deep into the playoffs. I wish they could meet in the semistate instead."
Friday night, Concord certainly looked like a team that could make a deep playoff run.
Led by 6-foot-3 senior quarterback David Yoder, the Minutemen simply had their way with the Tigers.
Yoder didn't play in the second half, but by the time the second quarter ended he had already done plenty of damage, as he completed 13 of 15 passes for 208 yards and five touchdowns.
He threw touchdown passes of 27 and 6 yards to JaVontae Hence, touchdown passes of 40 and 5 yards to Garrett Holmes and a 47-yard scoring strike to Jeff Weber.
The 40-yard pass to Holmes was his fifth and final touchdown, and it came with 6:24 still to play in the second quarter.
"He's a pretty special kid," Dawson said of Yoder, who took over last year for graduated all-state quarterback Bob Cira. "He had some pretty big shoes to fill and he's filled them."
"He runs the offense so well," Jensen said of Yoder. "He's very poised, and he plays on a great team."
Holmes led the Minutemen with five catches for 71 yards, while Logan Draus had two catches for 45 yards, Hence caught two balls for 33 yards and Kyle Gavin caught a pair of passes for 22 yards.
As if Yoder wasn't impressive enough, sophomore Chris Makin ran the offense in the second half and completed all three of his attempts for a total of 55 yards.
"We didn't want to play the starters in the second half, so we put Makin out there," said Dawson. "He's a linebacker, but he's played some quarterback on the JV team. He came in and did a great job running the offense."
While Concord's offense was both powerful and efficient, Warsaw's offense sputtered from the get-go.
Junior quarterback Justin Clemens threw an interception on the first play of the game, and the Minutemen scored four plays later.
The Tigers fumbled the ball away on their next two possessions, leading to a 21-0 deficit when Casey Clark scored on a 25-yard run with 4:38 remaining in the first quarter.
Clark scored Concord's final touchdown of the first half, displaying some shifty moves as he raced in from 70 yards out.
Clark finished the game with six carries for 135 yards.
The Tigers finished the game with four turnovers, three fumbles and the interception.
"We knew we'd have our hands full from the beginning, but we didn't need to give them three short fields like that in the first quarter," said Jensen.
Clemens finished the game 0 of 3 through the air.
All 148 offensive yards for the Tigers came on the ground. Senior Cody Kindle led the way with 80 yards on 17 carries.
Clemens scored the Tigers' lone touchdown powering his way in from eight yards out just six seconds into the fourth quarter.
Warsaw's scoring drive covered 85 yards in 12 plays. Eight of the plays were handoffs to Kindle.
"Cody ran hard in the second half," said Jensen. "It was nice to put a drive together."
Concord responded with another touchdown a little more than a minute later, this time on a five-yard run by Trevor Reed.
After giving 54 points at NorthWood last week and 55 points to Concord last night, the Tigers enter sectional play against a 7-2 Huntington North team.
"We've got an opportunity to play at home in the sectional next week," said Jensen. "Huntington North is a good team. We've got to get better."
