Staff Report

LANETT – Brett Collins rushed for 151 yards and three touchdowns and caught one more in a 36-7 win for Meadowview Christian on the road against Springwood Friday.

The Trojans (3-0, 2-0 Region) have now outscored opponents 129-13 this season.

Offense was supposed to be the strength of this team, but it has found a new forte in stopping opponents.

“I’m surprised with the way they’ve come together so quickly,” Meadowview coach Rick Jackson said. “We’ve been in it for three weeks. We felt we had the possibility of being a very good defensive football team. They worked their butts off in the mental and physical aspect.

“We missed some tackles, but we did a better job this week. They’re in the right place.”

Quarterback Randal Hamilton and Collins hooked up for a pass play that came with six seconds left in the first half. Hamilton ran in the 2-point conversion for an 8-7 lead.

Collins had a 65-yard run in the third quarter, followed by a Davis Jones 2-point conversion that pushed the lead to 16-7.

Later in the quarter, Collins took an option play off the right side 30 yards for another score. He added two more points to make it a 24-7 lead at the end of the third.

Collins scored for the final time on a 1-yarder in the fourth. A missed extra point made the score 30-7.

Late in the game, Richard Long recovered a ball in the end zone after a bad punt snap went over the punter’s head. Another missed PAT stopped Meadowview’s scoring at 36.

Hamilton finished the game 7-for-13 with 76 yards.

Jackson praised plays that turned out to be big factors for the team.

“Will Pitts made some big catches throughout the course of the game, especially for first downs,” Jackson said. “They were move-the-chain type catches.”

Judging by the way they played, Jackson thinks the Trojans’ best games are still ahead of them.

They are entering what he called an important section of their schedule, what likely will decide where they stand once the playoffs begin.

Beating Springwood (1-2, 1-1 Region) without an A+ performance was something he found encouraging.

“We didn’t play very well in the first half,” Jackson said. “We were emotionally flat. We had miscues offensively with dropped snaps and bad snaps in the shotgun – things we haven’t done all summer. The critical point in the game was when we scored with six seconds left to go in the first half and went ahead. The coaches did a good job of cleaning up some things.

“I’m proud we went on the road and didn’t play that well and still beat a good team.”