LIMA – Most nights offense and defense grab the headlines but on this Friday night those belong to St. Marys kicker Brandon Bowers as his 29 yard field goal lifted the Roughriders past host Shawnee 10-7 in a regular season week five battle.
Lined up from the right hashmark with 6:18 remaining in a defensive struggle the Riders junior kicker split the Shawnee Stadium uprights for the only score of the second half after his offense was unable to push a drive that started at the opponent 31 into the endzone.
Tonight’s game represented the 200th game coached by St. Marys mentor Doug Frye who moves to 14-4 all-time as the Roughriders coach against Shawnee and picked up his 200th career victory back in the 2016 meeting between the two schools.
Shawnee reached the scoreboard first in this contest as the started their second drive of the game at the St. Marys 44 and used just three plays for a touchdown, a 38 yard pass from QB Tyler Windau to Keaton Cooper with 6:27 to go in the opening quarter of play for the first Indians passing score of the season and a 7-0 lead.
Following an Indians punt the Riders offense would begin their third drive of the game at the 50 with 4:04 before the quarter break and were immediately into the Shawnee half of the field on a 24 yard gain by Ethan Wedding for a first down.
St. Marys picked up a pair of first downs and marched to the Indian goal line to tie up the game at 7-7 with 11:53 remaining in the opening half on rushing touchdown by Tanner Howell.
A trio of punts and a pair of interceptions led the game into the waning moments of the first half before the Riders took a knee on their last drive to send the game tied 7-7 into the halftime break.
Starting the second half with the football the Roughrider offense was able to move deep into Shawnee territory on the back of Aiden Hinkle but found themselves forced to turn over possession as Hinkle was stopped short on a fourth down attempt by the Indians defense.
Four punts and a St. Marys second turnover on downs on a second failed fourth down conversion attempt pushed the game deep into the final minutes before Shawnee found themselves pinned at their own four yard line on a punt by Bowers.
The Indians offense was unable to pick up more than just a single yard on first down and came up empty before they were forced to punt away the ball to set up the final score of the ballgame by Bowers.
Once they stopped the Indians on their next drive thanks to a sack and loss of 10 the Roughriders milked the final three and a half minutes off the clock and secured their sixth straight victory over Shawnee 10-7.
Shawnee sees their record drop to 3-2 on the season and will finish off the regular season next Friday night when they travel to take on the Elida Bulldogs.
St. Marys (3-2) stops a two-game losing streak and will return home next weekend to play host to Grand Lake rival Celina for their own regular season finale.
Aiden Hinkle paced the visitors on the ground as he rushed 21 times for 65 of the 155 yards the Riders rushed for on the night.
Shawnee was held to 39 yards rushing on 20 chances and picked up just 81 yards and a score on 9/19 from Tyler Windau who also was picked off for the eighth time this season in the loss.