The Hutchinson News
BELOIT -- The West team followed its game plan for the Eight-Man I all-star game -- run the ball with its size advantage on the line.
But when the West went to the air, it reaped huge benefits.
Macksville's Evan Loomis caught two touchdown passes from Cade Rietzke of Thunder Ridge, including the game-winning score with 1:05 left as the West edged the East 32-24.
The game-winning score came on a third-down play from the East's 28-yard line. Rietzke hit Loomis on a fly pattern down the middle of the field as he got behind the East secondary.
"We hadn't run that all game. We thought we'd get a l-on-1 and he's fast enough to run by them," said Rietzke, who was 6 of 8 for 97 yards.
"We'd been running the tight end drag all day, so they decided to send me on a fly," said Loomis, who caught four of the West's six completions on the day. "He threw it right on the money. It was up to me to catch it."
The catch by Loomis, who will play at Dodge City Community College this fall, capped a back-and-forth second half. The East twice erased deficits in the final 13 minutes.
The West led 16-6 at halftime. With one second left in the first half, Rietzke hit Loomis with a 6-yard touchdown pass - on an aforementioned tight end drag pattern.
But the East controlled the third quarter, taking an 18-16 lead when quarterback Kyle Haverkamp of Baileyville B&B hit Skylor Kistler of Udall on an 8-yard pass with 58 seconds left in the quarter.
The West then re-established its run game with a 17-play, 67-yard drive capped by a 1-yard drive by Skyline's Trent Befort. All 17 plays on the drive were runs, including eight by Quinter's Jordon Hargitt.
The East, though, answered two plays later when Haverkamp broke loose on a 66-yard run, tying the score at 24-24 with 4:04 left. Haverkamp rushed for a game-high 182 yards on 10 carries.
"I was proud that they never gave up," East coach Steve Tiernan of Baileyville said of his team. "There were a few times we could have hung our heads when things weren't going our way, but they never did."
One of those times things didn't go the East's way was on the ensuing drive.
After Haverkamp's touchdown, the East held the West on three running plays, forcing a punt with 2:23 left. But the East was called for roughing the punter, giving the West a first down near midfield.
Four plays later, Loomis caught the game-winning pass.
By the Salina Journal
BELOIT -- Kevin Wissman hates making mistakes.
They stick in his craw and no matter what else he might do that's positive, nothing makes him feel better. Not even returning a pair of kicks for touchdowns and providing huge momentum shifts that led his West team to a 56-32 victory over the East in the Division II Eight Man All-Star game at Trojan Field Saturday afternoon.
It was Wissman's fumble into the end zone in the game's first two minutes that helped the East go up 12-0 before fortunes turned for the West.
"I'm the kind of guy that, once I make a mistake, I don't forget about it the whole game," said Wissman, an Otis-Bison product. "I was happy I took two back, but I have one mistake and it's not a good game in my eyes."
The East had just gone ahead 18-14 on a 4-yard run by Josh Wessling of St. John's Beloit with 7:06 left in the second quarter when Wissman began his redemption effort.
Brett Ottley of Victoria fielded the ensuing kickoff at the 1-yard line and started to his left. He handed off to Wissman at the goal line, who found a wall of blockers to his right. Once he turned the corner, he turned on the jets and was gone for the 79-yard score.
That gave the West 22-18 lead.
In the third quarter, with the West leading 34-26, Wissman struck again -- this time on a punt return.
Fielding a 39-yard kick at the 10, Wissman headed to his left, juked a tackler at the 23 and narrowly missed the sideline. He cut back against the grain across the field to his right, found the blocking wall and was gone for a 70-yard touchdown.
"For him to come back and play the way he did was amazing," West coach Matt Scripsick of Ashland said. "The whole team knew we were not playing our best ball (at the start). We had to dib and dab and try to find some stuff that worked. Try to gain that mojo back and he really helped running those kicks back."
Wissman wasn't the entire show for the West, though, as Victoria quarterback Garrett Dreiling was 11 of 21 for 176 yards and three touchdowns.
"It wasn't me" Dreiling said modestly, "I mean, it was the receivers and the line did a helluva job."
Play action was the big thing in Dreiling's game as "we would pound the ball, pound the ball and when they were expecting another run, hit them with a pass."
"Our receivers really stepped up and Dreiling just put the ball where ever he needed to," Scripsick said. "The line really played above themselves."
Quivira Heights' Jacob Ingham, bound for the Shrine Bowl later this summer, hauled in six Dreiling passes for 103 yards and a 50-yard TD. Tate Andrews of Wallace County caught four passes for 68 yards and a pair of TDs.
The East trailed 40-32 when Hanover's Jerod Diederich scored from a yard out on the first play of the fourth quarter, but the heat and humidity of the afternoon was about to take a heavy toll.
"We were trading touchdowns with them," East coach Kevin Schmidt of Caldwell said. "But in the fourth quarter, when we would go three and out, their powerful offensive line would pound on our kids.
"We're not talking four- and five-play drives -- they were moving the ball eight and 10 plays, all inside the tackles and that kind of pounding wears on you."
"We called our 31 and 32 power, probably about a dozen times in a row, we counter off of that with the little play action pass," Scripsick said. "We could see that we were wearing them down a little bit and we knew if we just kept doing that the fourth quarter, we could win."
That strategy resulted in scoring drives of 45 and 44 yards as the West ran 17 plays, not counting a pair of kneel downs, to eight for the East.
Taylor Pearce pushed the West to a 48-32 lead with 8:48 to go in the game and an 11-yard Dreiling-to-Andrews toss made it 56-32.
