Elida routs Floyd, improves to 4-1

FLOYD — After a return to the gridiron, eight years later, some weren’t sure what to expect out of Elida’s reformed football team. However, as it turns out, the Tigers are making up for lost time thus far. On Saturday afternoon, Elida went in to Floyd and took down the Broncos, 47-8, to improve to 4-1 on the season.

“It’s a great feeling,” Tigers coach Jarred Hestand said. “These boys are doing good and they play good for me. We have good rapport. If everybody can stay healthy and keep their mouths shut, we’ll be good.”

Floyd (1-2) threatened to score first, getting down to Elida’s 29-yard line with a fresh set of downs to work with. However, the Broncos then had the first of their six fumbles on the day — and the first of four lost fumbles.

Elida then got right to work as Will Haley gained 27 yards on a run, before later catching a screen pass from Wesley Poling, rumbling 19 yards into the end zone to put the Tigers on the board first.

The Broncos were once again on the march, before fumbling the ball away on first-and-goal at the Elida 1. Mistakes began to effect both teams, however.

On the very next play, The Tigers appeared to have a 79-yard touchdown pass off of a trick play, out of their own end zone. But, a holding penalty was called in the end zone, leading to a safety.

With that, Floyd cut the deficit down to 7-2, and got the ball back on the ensuing safety kick. But once again, fumbles proved costly, as a bad pitch on the first play of the drive was recovered — only to be fumbled forward — and once again, into the hands of an Elida defender.

The Tigers responded with a 10-play drive, resulting in a 1-yard touchdown run by Levi Kline. “We hurt ourselves, we shot ourselves in the foot,” Broncos coach Steve Foust explained. “The kids worked hard and hustled, but they just didn’t play smart. I give the kids from Elida credit, they played hard. But, we really beat ourselves today.

“We drove the ball up and down the field, inside the 10, but fumbles and missed execution (kept us from scoring). Defensively, we just gave them all kinds of time, because we didn’t do our job.”

A Poling-to-Johny Woodruff 22-yard strike extended the lead to 21-2, before Floyd finally responded with a score of its own. The run-heavy Broncos gained 35 yards on Paco Torres’ wide-open pass to Ibis Melendez, setting up first-and-goal at the 10. Four plays later on fourth-and-goal at the Tiger 2, Ricardo Ramirez powered his way to make it 21-8.

However, that’s the closest Floyd would get the rest of the way, as Elida scored 26 unanswered points. Elida gained 243 yards on the ground, with Kline and Haley both eclipsing the 100-yard mark.

“We held onto ‘em pretty good. (Floyd) slowed the tempo of the game, and it kinda got to my kids a little bit,” Hestand said. “But, we pulled them together and got our tempo going and played our game, and ended up doing a good job.”

Hestand’s Tigers will next play Roy/Mosquero in Elida next Friday afternoon, while Foust’s Broncos travel to Lake Arthur on Friday night.