It would be hard for Free State High football coach Bob Lisher to find something wrong with Friday night's game against Olathe East.
Hard, but not impossible.
"The problem is, we did so well we didn't get to snap the ball very many times," Lisher said with a smile after the Firebirds' relatively easy 35-14 win at Haskell Stadium. "We wanted to work on some things passing the ball. We wanted to work on a few other things. But we were scoring so fast, we just couldn't get it done."
Free State (3-1 overall, 2-1 Sunflower League) only ran 12 plays and had a time of possession of 3:37 while building a 28-6 advantage in the first half. Olathe East (1-3, 1-2) ran 43 plays in 20:23.
The Firebirds, as they have done all season, scored quickly and scored in bunches.
Take senior running back Jake Lawrence, for instance. He had a mere five carries for 183 yards -- an average of 36.6 per carry -- and touchdown runs of 80, 73 and 15 yards, all in the first half.
"We tried to focus on defense and offensively we were hoping to be able to play with their defense," Lawrence said. "I was real surprised. I was just glad that I had good blocking."
Free State's longest scoring drive was two plays covering 86 yards. The other drives for scores were two plays for 21 yards, one play for 80 yards and one play for 15 yards.
Then there was senior Chris Wheatley's 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown to start the second half.
"That kind of set the tone," Lisher said. "I was sitting there and I don't know how he got through all that. There was a big congested pile there and all of the sudden he pops out of it and he was gone. Don't ask me how he got out of it because there was a big mass of bodies.
"He found a seem and got through it somehow."
Wheatley, who had five carries for 20 yards, almost slipped when he caught the ball on the one-yard line and appeared to have been stopped around the Firebirds' 25. But he burst out of the pack and was aided by senior Bo Blevins' block downfield.
Blevins also recorded his third interception of the season, breaking former Firebird Paul Dillon's team record of two (set in 1997).
"It's great," Blevins said of the win. "Compared to those nail-biters that we'd been having, it's just great. We're going to hopefully build on this next week for homecoming and on past that."
Finding themselves down 6-0 after only two minutes, the Hawks ran a perfect trick play that would have at least tied the game.
On second down and eight from their own 48-yard line, Olathe East junior quarterback Jared Ater tossed a lateral to fellow junior QB Casey Asbury in the flat. Asbury, normally the Hawks starting signal caller who's nursing an injured elbow, then tossed the ball to junior wide receiver Brandon Rogers.
Rogers was wide-open downfield but couldn't make the catch, as the ball bounced off his chest.
"We had a lot of plays and a lot of opportunities," Olathe East coach Jeff Meyers said, "and we didn't make the catches or we had penalties or we had fumbles. But it wasn't that we couldn't do the things that we wanted to do.
"We didn't do our assignments defensively to be able to stop them and we failed on our assignments offensively to be able to be in the game."
Free State was able to play many of its reserves in the second half, including junior back-up QB Dave Herrera, who had a 45-yard run on his first varsity carry. But Herrera saw limited duty as he injured his toe during the drive.
Other Firebirds who were dinged up after the game included Wheatley (groin), Blevins (back) and senior cornerback Tay Ogunnowo (shin contusion). Free State also was without the services of senior nose guard Shaun Flynn (second-degree concussion).
Lisher didn't think any of the injuries were serious, with the exception of Herrera, who might have a broken toe.
Another woe for the Firebirds was an unfavorable junior varsity schedule. Free State -- whose JV team had a game Monday against Shawnee Heights and a game tonight against Olathe East -- wasn't able to play as many of its reserves as Lisher would have liked because of high school rules.
"We finally get a game where we can play everybody and we can't play everybody because of the three-game rule," Lisher said, referring to limitations on the amount of time a player can play in a week.
Free State's next game is its homecoming game, Friday against Shawnee Mission East.
-- Robert Sinclair's phone message number is 832-7185. His e-mail address is rsinclair@ljworld.com.
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