During the past week of practice, as Simon Kenton coach Jeff Marksberry tried to limit the repetitions for the injured Miles Simpson, the electric running back felt a little stir crazy. He stood and watched his teammates run through their plays, and he grew bored.
There was no doubt, he told himself while on the sidelines, that he was going to play against Dixie Heights. And it didn’t matter if the ankle he injured last week still bothered him. He was going to play, and he was going to play well.
“At the beginning of the week, it was already fine from last week,” said Simpson, who only managed 31 yards on seven carries vs. Newport Central Catholic. “I couldn’t not play. I couldn’t let my team down.”
He didn’t. Although he didn’t look 100 percent – Miles said he couldn’t effectively stop on his ankle to cut one way or the other – the senior running back gashed Dixie Heights for 189 yards on 25 carries and accounted for five touchdowns to lead the Pioneers to a 49-28 victory against the Colonels at Menefree Stadium.
Dixie Heights (2-1) simply never found an answer for him.
“They made us defend the whole field, and he made some unbelievable runs,” Colonels coach Tom Spritzky said. “I’ll put a little bit of the blame on us, because we didn’t tackle him very well.”
Even when they managed to keep Miles out of the end zone, they also had to deal with Pioneers quarterback Chad Lawrence – who completed 10 of 15 passes for 215 yards and two touchdowns while rushing 18 times for 108 yards.
Lawrence tossed a 30-yard touchdown pass to Miles on the opening drive and then hit junior wide receiver Jake Krummen on a post route for a 58-yard score to make it 14-0.
Although Simon Kenton (2-0) took a 21-0 lead in the second quarter, Dixie Heights cut it to 28-21 early in the third quarter when Pioneers senior quarterback Ryan Wilson (32 of 46, 326 yards, three touchdowns) found senior wide receiver Ben Haggerty on a crossing route that went for a 29-yard score.
But Dixie Heights already had inflicted so much damage on itself that it couldn’t escape the hole of its own digging. On three separate occasions in the first half, the Colonels lost fumbles in Simon Kenton territory to stall scoring drives. That many mistakes was not easy to overcome.
“We didn’t stop them – don’t get me wrong – but we did nothing but kill ourselves offensively,” Spritzky said. “We felt at halftime we could move the ball if we didn’t turn it over. They did exactly what we asked them to do, but we couldn’t make a stand defensively when we needed to.”
But it was more than the Colonels’ ineffectiveness in slowing down Miles – who received a visit from University of Kentucky coach Rich Brooks, who watched the first quarter before departing by helicopter. It was the offense, as a whole, that impressed Marksberry.
“The knock on our team last year was that if you could stop Miles, you could stop us,” Marksberry said. “We spent a lot of time in the offseason trying to figure out ways to make our passing game more efficient and more effective that would allow our run game to benefit. We took out a ton of stuff, and we focused on the eight or nine things that we could be really good at. We developed a couple play-action things to exploit the defense chasing him. We’ve used that effectively the first two weeks of the season.”
And now that Miles is back – even if he’s not completely healthy – that only makes life better for the Pioneers.
“He’s not 100 percent, but I’ll take it,” Marksberry said. “If he’s not 100 percent and can go five (touchdowns), maybe he can go seven if he’s 100 percent. He gives us so much. He’s such a special player. He came in tonight 90 percent, and I thought that was enough to get out of him what we needed.” DIXIE HEIGHTS 0-14-7-7—28
at SIMON KENTON 7-21-6-15—49
SK–Simpson 30 pass from Lawrence (Repka kick)
SK–Krummen 58 pass from Lawrence (Repka kick)
SK–Simpson 27 run (Repka kick)
DH–Raleigh 9 pass from Ryan Wilson (pass failed)
SK–Simpson 55 run (Repka kick)
DH–Haggerty 25 pass from Wilson (Wilson run)
DH–Haggerty 29 pass from Wilson (Bronner kick)
SK–Simpson 1 run (kick failed)
SK–Simpson 3 run (Brown pass from Lawrence)
DH–Klei 1 run (Bronner kick)
SK–Baldwin 1 run (Repka kick)
RECORDS: Simon Kenton 2-0, Dixie Heights 2-1.
