Susan Harman

Your Prep Sports

NORTH LIBERTY – Liberty High is the ultimate Halloween nightmare. You may think you’ve buried it or taken the stuffing out of it, but it comes back to life time and time again.

The Lightning are never, ever out of a game even if you think you’ve driven a stake into their collective heart.

“We were down and we weren’t going to let this one go. We talked about finishing,” senior running back Sutton Koller said. “We got punched, and we punched right back, and we kept punching the whole game.”

As in a lot of Liberty High’s games this season multiple players and coaches deserved to take a bow after the Bolts’ 28-20 victory over Ankeny Friday night at Liberty Stadium.

Perhaps the biggest decision was made by Liberty High coach Scott Chandler.

Liberty High had been playing catch-up most of the first half when Ankeny had a decided advantage in field position. But the Hawks led only 17-14 at intermission.

Ankeny took the second-half kickoff and drove as far as the Bolts’ 14-yard line before settling for a Ryan Harrington field goal and a 20-14 lead.

The Lightning answered with an 80-yard touchdown drive that overcame two penalties.

Owen Drapeaux ran nine yards for the TD, and Collin Weis’s PAT gave the Bolts the lead, 21-20.

But that lead was precarious considering Ankeny wasn’t forced to punt all night.

Up to that point the Hawks had scored every time they had the ball except when a botched snap scuttled a makeable field-goal attempt.

So what did Chandler elect to do?

An onside kick.

“My special teams coach, Tony Burrier, who I played college football with, he’s been bugging me all week, and in the first half and at halftime,” Chandler said. “Finally, I gave in to him. All credit to him and all credit to our guys for going out and executing.”

Sophomore Eric Strunk recovered the fumbled kick, and the Bolts were in business on the Hawks’ 45.

“I saw a lineman dive on it, and then I saw it come out,” junior defensive back Logan Laubenthal said. “I thought we came up with it. I liked how aggressive (the coach’s decision) was.”

It was a gutsy call.

Ankeny didn’t need another short field.

It took 13 plays (overcoming two Liberty penalties) and a fourth-down conversion on a run by quarterback Reece Rettig to get it done. But the Lightning led 28-20 just one play into the fourth quarter.

Two key Hawk turnovers on their final two possessions sealed their fate.

After Liberty High took the eight-point lead Ankeny marched down the field as it had all game long.

On second-and-five from the Bolts’ 27 quarterback Luke Anderson completed a pass, but a big hit by a Liberty player jarred the ball loose and Drapeaux recovered with 9:06 to play.

The Bolts’ offense nearly ran out the clock.

They ran 12 running plays, mostly between the tackles, to reach the Ankeny 15.

The offensive line of Jaryn Sertterh, Cole Peden, Chase Schroeder, Erick Arzu and Caleb Burnett continually gave the Bolts’ backs room to run.

“Our offensive line really improved, especially in the second half,” Chandler said. “They controlled the game in the second half.”

“The O-Line set the tone,” Drapeaux said. “I just had to run hard, and that’s what I did. The O-Line did the rest. We got like 5 yards a carry; we were moving it.”

The Bolts turned it over on downs after two missed pass plays, but they left Ankeny 85 yards away from a potential tying TD and 2-point play.

Liberty High consumed all but 1:40 of the time left, but Ankeny managed to drive to the Liberty 7-yard line using quick outs and runs up the middle by bruising back Daniel Larmie.

With 11.7 seconds left Anderson again had trouble corralling an errant snap. He finally picked it up and tried to get it to a receiver in the flat.

Up stepped Laubenthal and intercepted the ball to end the threat.

“I saw him break back in and then he broke back out, and I just undercut it and picked it off,” Laubenthal said. “(The fumbled snap) definitely threw them off their timing.”

“We were applying pressure up front, and we got a pick,” Drapeaux said. Drapeaux was held on the play, something he said had happened pretty routinely, but of course Liberty declined the penalty.

Liberty High welcomed back Koller, who missed last week’s game against Cedar Rapids Washington, and he was a big contributor offensively and defensively.

He caught six passes for 140 yards and one touchdown.

On third-and-five from the Liberty 29, he caught a play-action pass from Rettig for 60 yards to set up the Bolts’ second TD.

On a night when Dallas Miller wasn’t able to get free, Koller helped provide a threat.

Drapeaux had two touchdowns and 108 yards rushing.

He was also mixing it up on defense all game.

Rettig completed 14-of-17 for 205 yards and one TD and rushed for 24 yards and another touchdown.

Again he ran the offense calmly and efficiently, seemingly always electing the correct option.

“Our quarterback showed up tonight like every other night,” Koller said.

The defense held Ankeny to two field goals inside the red zone and a third field goal was botched by a bad snap. All of those stops mattered.

Liberty High (6-1) has two remaining games at Waterloo West and Cedar Rapids Jefferson.

The Bolts will be heavily favored in both and are in great position to have a high playoff seed.

“We still have a lot of work to do, but yeah I think we’re ready,” Drapeaux said. “I love this team. I think we play well together. I think there’s not many people that can get in the way of our offense. Our defense is moving.”

ANK                           ICL

First downs                             21                                22

Rushing-yards                         30-151                         36-165

Comp-att-int                           22-33-1                       14-17-0

Passing-yards                          197                              205

Total yards                               348                              370

Punts-avg.                               0                                  2-34

Fumbles-lost                           3-1                               0

Penalties-yards                        2-10                             9-60

Ankeny              7   10    3   0  –  20

Liberty High    0   14   14  0  –  28

ANK – Daniel Larmie 7 run (Ryan Harrington kick)

ICL – Owen Drapeaux 15 run (Collin Weis kick)

ANK – Andrew Brandhorst 29 pass from Luke Anderson (Harrington kick)

ICL – Sutton Koller 13 pass from Reece Rettig (Weis kick)

ANK – Harrington 36 field goal

ANK – Harrington 30 field goal

ICL – Drapeaux 9 run (Weis kick)

ICL – Rettig 1 run (Weis kick)

Individual statistics

Rushing: Ankeny – Larmie 12-103, Caden Henkes 13-55, Anderson 2-3, Evan Irlmeier 1-0, team 2-(-10). Liberty – Drapeaux 19-108, Koller 6-28 Rettig 8-24, Charles Roberts 1-4, Dallas Miller 2-1.

Passing: Ankeny – Anderson 22-33-1 197. Liberty – Rettig 14-17-0 205.

Receiving: Ankeny – Evan Irlmeier 8-84, Andrew Brandhorst 6-69, Owen Fischer 2-17, Larmie 2-16, Henkes 3-7, Zyon Rife 1-5. Liberty – Koller 6-140, Collin Decker 4-55, Drapeaux 1-17, Jordan Schroeder 2-14, Dallas Miller 2-8.

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