Late drive lifts L-C past Denmark

DENMARK – Football is a game of inches and effort.

The Luxemburg-Casco football team needed every bit of those things Friday to come away with a 14-7 win against a hungry Denmark squad in a season-opening contest.

Senior Colton Worachek’s second effort on fourth-and-inches after initially being stopped short of the goal line resulted in the deciding score with 9.4 seconds remaining in the North Eastern Conference rivalry game.

“Super proud of him,” L-C coach Dillon Maney said of his middle linebacker. “The referee actually told us it was an awesome effort. I think he got some people around his legs, but with second effort got in. That’s the effort we need from all of our kids. That’s the expectation we need and that’s what we have to get out of our kids.”

It was only Worachek’s third carry of what turned out to be a defensive slugfest.

The 5-foot-10, 165-pounder came into the backfield on offense when senior Nathan Coisman came up short on third-and-goal and following a defensive offsides call that was run again by the 6-foot-4, 235-pounder, who sat out most of the fourth quarter with a leg ailment.

The Spartans’ game-winning drive began at the their 8-yard line after recovering a fumble with 8 minutes remaining.

A minute earlier the upstart Vikings were on the verge of getting the go-ahead score after senior Jack Satori recovered a L-C fumble.

For a team that is coming off a 2-7 campaign and hasn’t made the playoffs since 2014, Denmark put together an impressive effort against the Spartans, who are aiming to win a second NEC title in three years this season.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am,” Denmark coach Tom Neuman said. “These guys played as a team, and my coaching staff didn’t a heck of a job getting them ready.

“We took them completely out of their game plan. They went to a quarterback run game, which is not their game plan, and I didn’t roll enough subs in the game, so this one is on me.”

Neuman is in his first season with the Vikings and his intensity appears to have rubbed off his team rather quickly.

Denmark scored first with senior Brandon Wavrunek bulldozing up the middle for a 3-yard touchdown with 5 minutes, 45 seconds remaining in the second quarter.

L-C responded on the ensuing drive with Coisman punching it in from a yard out to tie the game with 2:25 left in the first half.

The contest was turnover free until the back-to-back fumbles in the fourth quarter.

L-C senior quarterback Garrit Aissen lost the first fumble, but came back with several runs that helped moved the chains on the game-winning drive.

“We had to make some adjustments at half and one of the adjustments was getting the ball in Garrit’s hands a little more, letting him run a little bit,” Maney said. “He fumbled one, but he came back in that next drive and responded.”

Although moral victories don’t show in the standings, the Vikings came away with plenty of positives after holding L-C’s explosive weapons on offense in check. The Spartans didn’t surpass 100 yards of offense until their final drive.

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“They were playing a lot of Cover 2,” Maney said. “We had a short passing game, and if they have good corners, which their corners are physical kids and our receivers didn’t block as well as we were hoping, that kind of shuts that game down. That extended us into the deep ball, and we dropped a couple balls.

“I think if you make a couple of those plays it’s a completely different deal, but credit Denmark because they play hard and they play fast. They ran a 3-4 and were shifting. They overloaded in the first half to our tight end side, to Coisman’s side, because they knew we would probably be running there a lot.”

Denmark will run into another tough test next week when it hosts Wrightstown, last year’s NEC champion.

Meanwhile, Luxemburg-Casco face Fox Valley Lutheran in its home opener.

“It’s Week 1,” Maney said. “You don’t know what to expect. We’re playing some inexperienced kids up front. I felt like at times we did some really good things and times we did some boneheaded things. Overall, I think there is a lot to be learned.

“We just told our kids we finish. That was the key. We got the ‘W.’ It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t effective from the standpoint of we didn’t have big numbers, but I tell you what, that last drive was imperative of our season moving forward because it’s one play away from losing a football game and it’s a whole different outcome.”