Gators face defending 5A champs
It will be a short homecoming for Island Coast coach Wayne Blair Friday night as he tries to drive his Gators into the Class 5A state final four with a regional finals win at Plantation American Heritage.
Blair finds himself on familiar turf against Heritage, the defending Class 5A state champions. He came to Island Coast last spring after coaching at nearby Lauderdale Lakes Boyd Anderson.
“We’re going to my back yard,” Blair said. “I know for a fact that Mike Rumpf (American Heritage coach) does a very good job with those guys. I have a bunch of my former players playing on that team. We’ve been watching film. We know exactly what they do. The quarterback is a four-star, five-star All-American.”
The Gators earned the trip to the Region 5A-4 finals last Friday when they defeated Cape Coral 15-0.
Relying heavily on their defense, the Gators shut down Cape Coral’s vaunted running and passing offense.
It was a rematch between the District 5A-14 rivals with the Gators (10-2) also winning the regular season match 23-3 on Oct. 2. The playoffs ended for the Seahawks (9-3), who just a week earlier handed coach Larry Gary his first playoff victory in his first playoff appearance.
“They were very reserved with their play calling,” Blair said of the Seahawks. “I don’t know if they wanted to let (quarterback Dylan) Bontrager get free or something like that. They ran the ball well in the first quarter, they got some gashes and gaps on us. Our guys did a good job with rallying back up. Zack Lackman had a whole bunch of tackles, Shannen Welch had a ton of tackles from the back side.
“Bontrager, he’s a slippery kid. He does a good job as far as getting out to the perimeter and creating his own throwing lanes.”
Two punts, a deflected punt and a fumble recovery helped the Gators score their 15 points.
“I didn’t want them to do anything spectacular,” Gary said. “Just play like you played all year. We just didn’t make the plays. That’s how it is.”
Sophomore quarterback Kory Curtis threw a touchdown pass, but he also came up big in a different way. It was Curtis’ punting, not his passing, that played a major role in the first two Gators scores.
“Kory Curtis did an amazing job, even when he was kicking against the wind,” Blair said. “That was big for our defense because that’s like playing with house money.”
After one Curtis punt pinned Cape Coral on its own 2-yard line, the Gators defense put the night’s first points on the board. Christian Wise sacked Bontrager in the end zone for a safety early in the second quarter.
Another Curtis punt downed inside the 5 led to a partially blocked punt. That set up Quad Jenkins’ 29-yard touchdown run with 3:19 left in the half. The conversion failed.
“That’s sometimes the price you pay when you have your quarterback doing the punting,” Blair said.
Both teams use their quarterbacks as punters.
Welch recovered Jordan Lewis’ fumble on the Seahawks’ 47 late in the second quarter. The Gators drove from there, with Curtis hitting Ryan Pulley on a seven-yard TD pass with 12 seconds left.
“It was supposed to be a jump ball, but I just ran it because (the defender) was playing off,” Pulley said. “Caught it. Touchdown.”
Pulley was wearing the number 7 jersey of teammate Van Edwards instead of his usual number 6. Edwards, the Gators’ leading rusher and scorer this season, suffered a broken fibula in the first playoff win over Sarasota Booker. Both Pulley and Edwards had transferred to Island Coast from Riverdale.
Zelan Lambert shouldered the rushing load in Edwards’ absence, gaining 210 yards on 31 carries. He had a 49-yard touchdown run negated by penalty. Jenkins added 62 yards on seven attempts.
Cape Coral had chances to score early and late. Both times the Seahawks came up short.
Cape Coral 0 0 0 0 – 0
Island Coast 0 15 0 0 – 15
IC – Safety, QB tackled in end zone
IC – Jenkins 29 run (conversion failed)
IC – Pulley 7 pass from Curtis (Curtis kick)