By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
There’s winning, there’s dominating, and then there’s what happened in Lyons on Friday night.
With the clock winding down Michael Murray took a handoff and ran three yards to paydirt for his second score of the game to put SES on top 46-0.
At the end of the first quarter.
By the end of the half the Southeast of Saline Trojans, who by now had pulled all of their starters, led 74-0.
The JV unit tacked on 20 more in the second half as Southeast cruised to their highest-scoring output in the last 20 years, handing Lyons a 94-0 loss.
Those who examined this matchup on paper saw a blowout coming a mile away, but no one expected a rout of this magnitude.
The Trojans scored more points in the first quarter of this contest than 34 of the 40 2A teams in action this week did in a full game.
SES racked up 464 yards of total offense, with eight different Trojans finding the end zone for a touchdown.
The only triple-digit yardage gainer was freshman Grady Gebhardt, who coming into this contest had just ten touches for 40 yards.
In the second half, Grady carried the ball nine times for 112 yards and the first three touchdowns of his young varsity career.
Somehow, despite all this, the Trojan defense stole the show, putting on a clinic for 48 minutes.
Lyons attempted nine passes against SES, one of which was intercepted, and only three of which were completed, all for negative yardage.
Things didn’t look much better in the run game where the Lions handed the ball off 22 times, losing yardage on 16 of those occasions.
The Southeast defense didn’t just refuse to concede ground, they pushed Lyons back 44 yards over the course of the game, with second-stringers carrying the load for three of the four quarters.
Just for good measure, the Trojans checked all the extra boxes as well with an interception, a fumble recovery, a punt returned for a touchdown, and a blocked punt returned for a touchdown.
Most importantly, Southeast had an opportunity to get their younger players critical playing time on the varsity field, and the next generation of Trojan football made the most of it in a major way.
“I thought all of our kids played well tonight,” SES head coach Mitch Gebhardt said. “We put some younger kids in there and we expect them to make the most of those opportunities. They certainly did that.”
The Trojans will close out their regular season at home next week as they prepare to host Ellsworth in a battle of ranked, undefeated 2A teams, with the winner claiming a league, and a district title.