Douglas Miles

Your Prep Sports

DURANT – One had to figured Nolan DeLong would get his yards.

After all, the Durant senior tailback entered Friday night leading the entire state in rushing yards and just 93 shy of 6,000 over his incredibly-productive career.

Keeping DeLong out of the end zone appeared to be well within the abilities of the Regina defense.

“Hats off to him, he’s a stud,” Regina senior linebacker Ronan Poynton said after the Regina defense recorded three fourth-down stops and held Durant scoreless until the final quarter of a 26-12 Regals’ victory in a Class 1A District 5 prep football game at Durant High School.

“Played him for two years now and it is like you’re hitting a brick wall. I think it is awesome. We have no fear out there and that is the best part. Our defense is willing to make hits, put our bodies on the line even when it hurts. Even when we’re injured. We’ll stay in and fight until the end. It is pretty easy to make some tackles on him when it is 11 against one. Everyone rallying to the football.”

DeLong – who holds a scholarship offer from Northern Iowa and has visited Iowa, Nebraska and Wisconsin – carried the ball a whopping 32 times for 207 yards, which bumped his state-leading total to 1,919 yards and 6,114 in four years.

But on Durant’s opening possession, DeLong was stuffed on 4th and goal from the Regina four-yard line.

“I thought we did some really, really good things,” second-year Regina Coach Jason Dumont said. “We had a couple stunts there and the kids executed them really, really well and got some big stops. But that is what Nolan is going to do to you. There is nothing there and he finds three yards. It is going to be three yards, three yards, three yards and then he is going to bust a big one out and you just have to try and get a stop on that 4th (down) and 1.”

Regina (5-3, 3-2 Class 1A District 5) stunned the hometown Wildcats with four touchdown plays of at least 44 yards.

Senior tailback Levi Daniel raced 60 yards for a score on the opening drive of the game, while junior quarterback Gentry Dumont gave the Regals a 12-0 halftime lead with an 84-yard strike to junior receiver Jackson Naeve with just 75 seconds left in the second quarter.

“I saw that corner splitting Jackson and Ty (Joss),” Gentry Dumont said. “Those big plays go back to the coaches and go back to our line and go back to everyone on the team. We’re all making the same play. It is not one person, not two people, it is everybody. It is all 11.”

After the Regina defense stuffed DeLong on another fourth-down attempt in the third quarter, the Regals reached into their bag of tricks on the ensuing play.

Gentry Dumont took the snap and gave the ball to motioning receiver Alex Jensen, who pitched it to junior Jack Hoover racing in the opposite direction.

Hoover flipped the ball back to Dumont, who found a wide-open Chris Waikel for a 44-yard score.

Suddenly, it was 19-0 Regina less than four minutes into the second half.

“Looking down there and seeing Chris wide open, it was just like, ‘Oh man, he is open down there, let’s go’,” said Gentry Dumont, who finished the game with 171 passing yards and two scores.

Durant (5-3, 2-3) got its first touchdown just seconds into the final quarter, but its momentum was short-lived as Naeve fielded the ensuing kickoff and sprinted 77 yards for a touchdown.

“We had been seeing them kick it short all week,” Naeve said. “I had my blockers coming, we knew we could get a hole and they just did a great job.”

Nave tallied 95 receiving yards, while Daniel finished with 148 on the ground.

Senior defensive back Steven Liu intercepted his team-best fourth pass of the season in the waning seconds of the first half, while Joss added a pick in the second.

Brady Meincke scored an offensive touchdown and collected an interception on defense for Durant.

The game was the regular-season finale for both schools, who will both be a part of the 1A playoff field when the pairings are announced on Saturday.

Regina will open the playoffs with a first-round game against a second-place team from another district, while Durant will visit a district champion.

“We still have to fix some things,” Dumont said. “You saw that tonight. We had some breakdowns defensively. We had some breakdowns offensively and when you are playing a good team like Durant, they will expose you. Our focus has been the last couple of weeks, ‘Do your job,’ and I thought we got better at that tonight. But for us to make a deep push in the playoffs, everybody has got to do their job every play, so we are going to continue to strive to do that.”

                                     ICR                 DUR

First Downs               7                      12

Rushes-yards             37-185             37-209

Comp-Att-Int             7-13-1             8-16-2

Passing yards            171                  132

Total yards                356                  341

Punts-avg.                  1-43                 2-34.0

Fumbles-lost              2-1                   0-0

Penalties-yards          6-57                 5-50

Regina                        6  6  7    7  –  26

Durant                        0  0  0  12  –  12

ICR – Levi Daniel 60 run (kick failed)

ICR – Jackson Naeve 84 pass from Gentry Dumont (kick failed)

ICR – Chris Waikel 44 pass from Dumont (Lacina kick)

DUR – Brady Meincke 9 run (run failed)

ICR – Naeve 77 kickoff return (Lacina kick)

DUR – Garrett Hollenback 80 pass from Charlie Huesmann (run failed)

Individual Statistics

RUSHING – ICR: Gentry Dumont 7-5, Levi Daniel 16-148, Jackson Naeve 12-46, Evan Lacina 1-(-13), Carson Irving 1-(-1). DUR: Brady Meincke 1-9, Nolan DeLong 32-207, Isaac Nielsen 4-(-7).

PASSING – ICR: Gentry Dumont 7-13-1-171. DUR: Isaac Nielsen 5-8-1 47, Charlie Huesmann 2-6-2 86, Nolan DeLong 1-2-0 (-1).

RECEIVING – ICR: Jackson Naeve 2-95, Levi Daniel 1-2, Chris Waikel 2-51, Alex Jensen 1-8, Jack Hoover 1-15. DUR: Brady Meincke 4-40, Caden Meyer 1-(-1), Grant Hein 1-7, Nolan DeLong 1-6, Garrett Hollenback 1-80.

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