INDEPENDENCE—Conneaut’s Wyatt Payne rushed for three touchdowns in a 33-15 non-conference win at Independence on Friday at Alumni Field.
Payne ran for three and 10-yard touchdowns to help the Spartans build a 13-0 first-quarter lead and he added a six-yarder in the fourth quarter.
“We run a two-headed monster,” said Conneaut coach Rocco Dobran. “We’ve got a running back and a quarterback who like to run the ball, and our offensive line did very well tonight, so those guys had a lot of success early, and that success opened up to a couple of passes. We were able to get them up playing the run and hit some passes over the top. We have not passed very well at all this year, so we were happy with that. We’ve got to clean up some of the penalties on the outside, that’s our biggest key moving forward.”
Ty Covill added a two-yard touchdown run in the second quarter to help the Spartans to a 19-0 halftime lead.
Establishing the run game early allowed Conneaut to be more aggressive on defense, which limited Independence’s depleted offense.
“That was great,” Dobran said. “If you can establish the run game it puts the other team on their toes. There’s not a lot you can do at that point.”
Independence’s Rocco Ressler, a wide receiver who moved to quarterback after the Blue Devils lost their top three signal-callers to injury, scored on a six-yard run in the third quarter to cut Conneaut’s lead to 19-7, but the Spartans answered with a 55-yard touchdown pass from Max Gleason to Ethan Osborne.
Ressler threw a 10-yard touchdown pass to Tyler Miller in the fourth quarter, but again the Spartans answered with Payne’s third touchdown run of the game to close out the scoring.
“We were trying to be aggressive,” Dobran said. “We saw they had lost their last two quarterbacks in the last couple of games, so we knew we had to at least put some pressure on him. That kid was a heck of an athlete and I thought he did a great job to keep them around. It was important to get after that guy, so he couldn’t stand back there and picks us apart.”
With the win, Conneaut improved to 2-1 while Independence dropped to 0-3.
