By Murray Gleffe
Correspondent
GREEN BAY—The Green Bay East Red Devils gave up over 300 yards on the ground in route to a 48-6 defeat to the Seymour Thunder in a football game played August 23 at City Stadium.
Joseph Coonen ran for 149 yards and a touchdown, and Aaron Geurts added three touchdowns-two on the ground and one receiving for the Thunder.
For the Red Devils, freshman quarterback Riley Jensen ran for over 170 yards and one touchdown in his debut.
Green Bay East committed five costly turnovers that the Thunder turned into 28 points.
“I’m very disappointed with our ball security tonight,” said Shaun Behrend, Green Bay East head coach. “We had some plays that were about to develop and then we either dropped the ball or had some miscommunication on routes.”
After the Red Devils punted on their opening series, Seymour wasted no time getting down the field, and five plays later Geurts punched the ball in from one yard out to give the Thunder an opening quarter 7-0 lead.
Another three and out by Green Bay East led to another short field and quarterback Peyton VanDeHei plunged in to put Seymour up two scores just seven minutes into the game.
“We’ve got to do a better job getting off blocks on defense,” added Behrend. “We are very young and the kids are learning.”
The game quickly started to spiral downhill for the Red Devils in the second quarter.
Seymour scored on all five of its possessions to take an insurmountable 48-0 lead into halftime.
Included in that total was 181 yards of rushing and 54 yards of receiving.
With a running clock in place for half number two, Green Bay East got their second stop of the evening and it seemed to spark the Red Devils offense after gathering just 72 yards of total offense in the first half.
With the Red Devils backed up to their own 3-yard line after a successful Seymour punt, Jensen broke through the first of two arm tackles and jaunted down the right sidelines 85 yards before being tackled inside the red-zone. Two plays later, he called his own number for the Red Devils first touchdown of the night.
“The kid (Jensen) has tremendous talent; otherwise we wouldn’t have started him tonight,” Behrend said. “He’s going to mistakes as well. We’ll push through the good and the bad and get ready for week two.”
Box Score:
Seymour: 14,34,0,0—48
Green Bay East: 0,0,6,0–6