Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

TIFFIN – This one won’t go into the collection of the cleanest wins of Lance Pedersen’s coach career.

In fact, Clear Creek Amana’s homecoming clash with Marion was downright ugly for most of the night.

It will go down as a win and that’s really all that Pedersen and the Clippers cared about on Friday.

Clear Creek Amana overcame a slew of offensive miscues, an early deficit and an injury to starting quarterback Conlan Poynton to down Marion 35-13 in a Class 4A, District 4 contest in Tiffin.

“I’d rather win ugly than have a loss and that was definitely ugly,” Pedersen said. “There was nothing pretty about it but it’s still 1-0 in the column.”

Clear Creek Amana fumbled eight times, losing three, threw an interception on a botched field goal attempt and missed two field goals.

The Clippers still found a way to snap a three-game losing streak on Friday.

Tay Seals scored a pair of long touchdowns and the Clear Creek Amana defense limited Marion (1-5, 0-2) to 66 total yards and four first downs as the Clippers improved to 3-3 and 1-1 in District 4 play.

“We were on a couple of game losing streak and we just had to turn it around,” Seals said. “We wanted to play our game and have fun with it.”

Clear Creek Amana lost fumbles on its first two possessions of the game.

The second Clipper fumble was returned 15 yards for a touchdown by Marion linebacker Logan Hendricks t to give the Wolves a 7-0 lead with 7:47 remaining in the opening quarter.

Clear Creek Amana pulled even when Poynton scored on a 26-yard touchdown run with 3:23 remaining in the opening quarter.

Poynton left the game early in the third quarter and didn’t return as sophomore Texton Bollers took over at quarterback.

On the first play after Poynton departed Bollers hit Seals for a 35-yard touchdown on a post pattern on fourth-and-15 to give the Clippers a 14-7 lead it would never give up.

“Conlan goes out and you don’t ever want to see your starting quarterback go down and he’s one of my best friends so that that hurt but Texton came in and we’ve given him first team reps in practice all the time so we knew he was ready for this game,” Seals said. “I told him I had him and I was going to make him look good and we were on the same page at the right time and he threw a perfect ball.”

Marion cut the lead to 14-13 on a 51-yard strike from Lucas Stearns to Matthew Danninger with 5:28 remaining before the half.

Seals had the answer on the ensuing kickoff.

The electric junior took a handoff from Ethan Vice at the 17 yard line and raced 83 yards untouched to put the Clippers up 21-13 with 5:14 left in the first half.

“I told Ethan if he got it to me I would take it to the house,” Seals said. “I saw that one defender and I knew I was gone.”

The rest of the game belonged to the Clipper defense.

Clear Creek Amana held Marion scoreless for the final 29 minutes limiting to Wolves to just two first downs in the second half.

“Our intensity was a lot better tonight,” Clear Creek Amana senior linebacker Dylan Schrock said. “We were really playing as a team on defense.”

Schrock and Noah Collis each had interceptions and Shrock was one of four different Clippers to record a sack as Clear Creek Amana held Marion to -14 rushing yards.

“The way Pedersen really pushes it is just 1-0 every week,” Schrock said. “We aren’t worried about the score or stats or anything like that we just want to be 1-0 every week.”

Collis and Ian Kelley had touchdown runs in the second half as Clear Creek Amana put the game away.

Bollers threw for 106 yards and a touchdown in relief of Poynton and Kelley rushed for a team-high 49 yards.

“We struggled offensively, we kept putting the ball on the ground and just didn’t do the things that we needed to do to be successful on the offensive side but that’s why you have three phases of the game and our defense was outstanding the entire night and our special teams was good,” Pedersen said. “When one phase of the game isn’t going very well the other phases have to be picked up and I think our guys did a great job with that.”

CCA                MAR

First downs                12                    4

Rushes-yards             141                  29-(-14)

Comp-Att-Int            7-18-1             4-18-2

Passing yards             161                  66

Total yards                302                  52

Punts-Avg.                 3-42.3              11-30.8

Fumbles-lost              8-3                   2-0

Penalties-yards          7-60                 6-55

Marion                                  7   6   0   0   –  13

Clear Creek Amana          7  14  0  14  –  35

MAR – Carson Frommelt 18 fumble return (Landon Tilkes kick)

CCA – Conlan Poynton 26 run (Aiden Gross kick)

CCA – Tay Seals 35 pass from Texton Bollers (Gross kick)

MAR – Matthew Danninger 51 pass from Lucas Stearns (Kick failed)

CCA – Seals 83 kick off return (Gross kick)

CCA – Noah Collis 4 run (Gross kick)

CCA – Ian Kelley 1 run (Gross kick)

Individual Statistics

RUSHING – CCA: Ian Kelley 10-49, Conlan Poynton 6-46, Ethan Vice 4-36, Noah Collis 5-30, Texton Bollers 11-5, Tay Seals 2-0, Wyatt Key 1-(-12), Team 2-(-13).

MAR: Colton Taylor 9-16, Logan Hendricks 7-5, Nathan Garcia 2-3, Lucas Stearns 6-(-6), Andrew Ahmann 3-(-21), Team 2-(-11).

PASSING – CCA: Conlan Poynton 2-6-0 55, Texton Bollers 5-11-0 106, Wyatt Key 0-1-1 0. MAR: Lucas Stearns 3-15-2 53, Andrew Ahmann 1-3-0 13.

RECEIVING – CCA: Aren Schlemme 2-86, Tay Seals 2-44, Nick Daniel 2-25, Jonah Drake 1-6. MAR: Matthew Danninger 3-53, Lucas Stearns 1-13.

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