Beeker, Senecas blank Margaretta 31-0

There is a reason Calvert senior Nolan Beeker is an all-Ohio player. It was on full display Friday night at Hoernemann Stadium at Heidelberg as the Senecas hosted winless Margaretta. Beeker started his night with a 7-yard touchdown catch six minutes in. He then reeled in an up-for-grabs pass for a 31-yard score about four minutes later. He then created the play of the night for the Senecas late in the first half. With Calvert leading 14-0 with under a minute remaining in the half, Margaretta was putting together its best drive of the game until Beeker strip sacked Cameron Sosa, which resulted in a 71-yard fumble return for a TD from Lee Morgan, putting the Senecas up 21-0 and ahead for good in a 31-0 rout in Sandusky Bay Conference River Division play."Nolan does a great job and he loves the game of football," Calvert coach Steve Reser said. "So anytime you have the fire he does — and he has some pretty great athletic ability too — but when you put those two things together he is a pretty good football player."He'll play anywhere we ask him to play, but he was pretty productive. We put him back on defense tonight and he did a great job, getting to the quarterback a few times. As a team we switched some things up and we got some pressure on the quarterback, so hopefully we see more of that moving forward."A big key for Reser and the Senecas was a faster start than in weeks past. It's exactly what they got.Margaretta (0-6, 0-2 SBC River) took the opening kickoff and went three-and-out. Calvert responded with a nine-play drive ending with the first Beeker score."I think our young men put together a pretty good game tonight," Reser said. "There's still some things we have to work on, but coming out early and shutting them down, that was one of our goals. We talked about playing similarly to last week, but one thing we wanted changed was them not scoring right away. "We played better defense this week and got them to punt right away and then we scored on our first possession. We had some nice plays — not any huge plays, we were more methodical — and our offensive line did a great job and we were able to punch it in."Another goal for Reser this week was establishing the running game. Sure, Shultz threw it 24 times Friday, but the Senecas ran the ball 24 times for 112 yards, with 15 of those yards coming on a Shultz touchdown in the third quarter. Overall, Calvert was balanced offensively. Shultz had 36 yards on the ground, Jacob Rombach — who returned from an injury before the season started — ran for 31 yards, and Cal Warnement (29) and Hunter Yeakle (25) also got some carries."That was a goal. It was great to get Rombach back tonight, but in his absence Yeakle has done a great job," Reser said. "Hunter is that guy that can play a bunch of different positions and he does. He's a real team player. And Cal Warnement is only a freshman, so right now we have some good things going on in the backfield. "I wouldn't call it a three-headed monster just yet, but a couple of them are pretty speedy and like to run the football hard, which is what we like. And if we continue to run some screens and switch up the snap count, taking a little more pressure off the offensive line, I think our running game will get even better moving forward."With the score 28-0 in the fourth period, Calvert's Blake Ronski drilled a 31-yard field goal to begin the running clock and end the scoring.Shultz finished 12 of 24 passing for 147 yards with Beeker hauling in three catches for 52 yards.The Polar Bears only gained 169 yards of offense, including 72 on the ground. They were also just 3 of 10 on third down conversions.Sosa was 14 of 20 passing for 97 yards as his top receiver was Gage Bodey with six grabs for 51 yards. Kaine Smetzer led the ground gamer with six carries for 51 yards."We wanted to see the clock continue to run because we had enough points and we wanted to see Margaretta's score stay at zero," Reser said of the second-half goals. "So we were real happy with the defensive effort tonight. A shutout is a great thing because in this day and age they don't happen very often. So we were happy with the effort on that side."