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Vikings Skin Otters
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- Created on Sunday, 11 September 2011 14:07
- Written by Eric Berry
Vikings Skin Otters
St. Hilaire fantastic in win!
By Eric Berry
The Lyndon Institute Vikings notched their first win of the season, behind a mind-boggling effort from stud fullback Craig St. Hilaire, 30-16 yesterday at Robert K. Lewis Field.
On the day NSN unofficially had big #27 rushing for 303 yards on 41 carries, an eye popping 7.4 yards per carry including dazzling run after dazzling run. He went through, around, over, against the grain of the defense, and finally into the end zone to close out the scoring with a 4 yard TD run, and catch, on a two-point conversion.
Lyndon also got three touchdown runs from James Shufelt which included the first score with 6:53 left in the second period. St. Hilaire cashed in on the two-point conversion and the Vikes had the early 8-0 lead. It was the only score in the first half as the Vikings defense held steady after giving up 46 points a week earlier. Justin Wright and Curtis Randall dominated the trenches while Nick Carmichael, St. Hilaire and Mike Ochetto converged to make several gang tackles.
After a lengthy drive to start the second half, the Vikings would come up empty-turning the ball over inside the Otters 15 yard line. The failed drive was eerily similar to a first half drive by Otter Valley that resulted in a turnover in the same area of the field.
The Otters would, however, strike back just 4:07 later as Justin Owen(12-17, 182 yards, 2TD) found Jim Winslow in the back corner of the end zone to close the LI lead to 14-6. The PAT failed.
After a short kick, giving Lyndon great field position the maroon and white took little time to rally back, getting a 12-yard TD run by Shufelt, one David Copperfield would have been proud of, as the entire Otters defense had no idea the quarterback even had the ball. Again, St. Hilaire bowled his way over the defense for the two-point conversion.
Owen quickly went back to work and threw a strike to Brett Patterson in front of the LI sideline, as the wideout collected the pigskin behind the LI defense and scampered 78 yards to paydirt. The Otters got a much needed two-point conversion themselves to close the deficit to a seemingly manageable 8 points.
Lyndon, and their fullback, had other ideas however. The battering ram he is, St. Hilaire, kept getting the call from head coach Dan Nolan, and signalcaller James Shufelt-not a bad idea by any means. The Vikings were taking precious time off the clock and closed it out with the aforementioned final touchdown by their fullback.
Lyndon’s defense meantime, was much better and way more aggressive. Just ask Owen. He was pressured out of the pocket all day by the great nose tackle play of Randall, and also by Matt Laplant who collected a sack of Owen in the Otters last offensive series.
A 303-yard effort is not that anyone should, or could, forget about. However, for the Vikings they must look forward to facing the Springfield Cosmos next Friday night while the Otters are back on the road against U-32 also on Friday.
By Quarter Scoring
1st 2nd 3rd 4th
OV 0 0 0 14 14
LI 0 8 6 16 30
Records-Otter Valley 1-1, LI 1-1
