Your Prep Sports

TIFFIN – It started so well.

On the first offensive play of the new season, Clear Creek Amana senior quarterback Quinton Tran connected with Owen Rosenberg on a 39-yard pass in Friday’s opener with Marion at Clipper Field.

Then Tran was heading inside the Wolves 10-yard line on a run and that is when it all changed.

Tran was hit and coughed up the football. Marion pounced on it and in that moment, the Wolves defense took control.

Marion held the Clippers to an unofficial total of 141 yards of total offense en route to a 15-0 victory.

Clear Creek Amana was its own worst enemy in the first quarter.

On the next drive, Tran had the Clippers back in the red zone, but saw a fourth-down pass picked off in the end zone.

Later in the half, CCA lost 28 yards on a fourth-down play that saw the snap sail over the head of punter Cale Berry.

“You can’t make the mistakes we made, penalties, turnovers, dropped snaps, missed assignments and expect to win,” Clear Creek Amana coach Matt Haddy. “Give credit to Marion. They had a good defensive game plan. They didn’t give us a lot of time to do many different things.”

Marion Coach Michael Joyner said the Clippers had plenty of offensive wrinkles, but was proud of the way his players responded.

“(CCA) tried a lot of their stuff and our guys did a great job rallying to the football,” he said. “We forced them to put the ball on the ground quite a bit and we took advantage of that.”

The Clipper defense was matching Marion’s effort until an injury to Wolves quarterback Kaleb Diers late in the first quarter forced some quick adjustments.

Joyner had to improvise and called on senior fullback Trey Franck, who had not played quarterback since his freshman year, to fill in.

“We did that on the fly,” Joyner said. “Nobody besides Kaleb had taken a snap during all our work leading up to this game.”

All Franck did while Diers was getting checked out was bust off a pair of runs producing first downs.

Diers then returned and handed off to Hunter Horak, who raced 19 yards for a score with 13 seconds left in the first quarter.

Diers’ 2-point run made it an 8-0 deficit.

The second half saw numerous stoppages with players on both teams cramping.

Clear Creek Amana had Tran on the bench with cramps for a good portion of the second half.

“It was tough without our starting quarterback for a couple series,” Haddy said. “We had linemen and backs cramping and we were trying to find guys to go in for them. (Marion) had the same issues, but they handled things a little better.”

With Diers fighting cramps in the fourth quarter, Joyner again turned to Franck.

Instead of sweeping around the end, Franck pulled up and hit Darius Rouson with a perfectly-placed 34-yard scoring pass with 3:21 remaining.

“I’ve never thrown a pass in a football game before,” Franck said with a smile. “I just put it out there and Darius made a great catch.”

Marion remains on the road next Friday night, playing at Benton Community. CCA will be at Solon.

M                    CCA
First downs                14                    10
Rushes-yards             43-136             37-14
Passing yards            139                  127
Comp-Att-Int            11-21-1           13-20-1
Punts-Avg.                 5-39.2              4-45.4
Fumbles-lost              1-0                   6-2
Penalties-Yards         5-25                  5-40

Marion           8  0  0  7  – 15
CCA                0  0  0  0  –  0

MAR – Hunter Horak 19 run (Kaleb Diers run)
MAR – Darius Rouson 34 pass from Trey Franck (Noah Fischer kick)

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS

RUSHING – Marion: Hunter Horak 6-50, Trey Franck 11-47, Kaleb Diers 14-27, Darius Rouson 3-1, Adam Rose 6-1, Jasper Hancox 3-10. CCA: Jack Stevens 19-54, Carson Fox 1-3, Quinton Tran 15-10, Wyatt Key 1-(minus 2) Team 1-(minus 28).

PASSING – Marion: Kaleb Diers 10-20-1 105, Trey Franck 1-1-0 34. CCA: Quinton Tran 11-17-1-111, Wyatt Key 1-2-0-2, Cale Berry 1-1-0-14.

RECEIVING – Marion: Kaiden Griffith 2-13, Daegon Michaels 3-21, Adam Rose 3-36, Darius Rouson 2-50, Hunter Horak 1-19. CCA: Owen Rosenberg 6-74, Sam Pettinger 1-14, Cale Berry 2-15, Haiden Hardy 3-22, Jack Stevens 1-2