Eagles soar past Fostoria 62-20

FOSTORIA – Fostoria High School's football team failed to capitalize on some early opportunities on both sides of the ball and against a team like Eastwood that will come back to haunt you.Caiden Maize ran for four touchdowns and quarterback Kadyn Donnell factored into another four scores as the Eagles beat the host Redmen 62-20 at Dick Kidwell Field at Memorial Stadium on Friday in Northern Buckeye Conference play."It's a flashback of Otsego: we had chances, we didn't put the ball in the endzone," Fostoria coach Derek Kidwell said. "When you're playing teams that are better than you and you're trying to stay with them and you may want to try and pull an upset, you've got to score every opportunity you get and we didn't do that. We dropped a touchdown pass, we threw an interception in the end zone, so we make life difficult on ourselves."The Eagles scored on each of their first three drives to take a 21-0 lead. Donnell broke free for a 34-yard scoring run at 8:13, Maize rushed five yards for his first touchdown at 1:02 to put Eastwood up 14-0 at the end of the first quarter. Donnell threw the first of his two touchdown passes at 7:51 of the second quarter, this one a 25-yarder to Dayquan Oliver in the end zone to extend the lead to 21-0.Meanwhile the Redmen fizzled out on their first two drives. On the opening possession of the game FHS moved the ball 38 yards to the Eastwood 42 before turning the ball over on downs. Fostoria drove the ball 53 yards to the Eagles 13-yard line before again surrendering the ball on downs.Their next two possessions ended in punts.But a fortuitous play gave the Redmen some life. Donnell threw a pass on first-and-10 from the Fostoria 36 that went through the hands of Oliver and into the arms of Julius Robinson who, returned the interception 70 yards for a touchdown. Miller ran for the 2-point conversion to cut the score to 21-8 at 5:34.Fostoria tried an onside kick, which Eastwood recovered at the FHS 43. On the third play of the drive the Eagles fumbled the ball and the Redmen recovered it at their own 45 with 4:33 remaining in the second. FHS moved the ball to the Eastwood 12, but failed to score as Miller was intercepted in the end zone by Wyatt Oestreich. The Eagles did not waste the opportunity as Brock Messinger pulled down a 28-yard touchdown pass from Donnell to complete an 80-yard, 6-play drive in 1:19 and go up 28-8 with 55 seconds left in the first half. Just eight seconds later Donnell retuned a fumble 21 yards for another touchdown and the Eagles carried a 34-8 lead into the locker room at halftime.Eastwood received the ball to open the second half and Maize rushed for his first of three touchdowns in the quarter, a 4-yard score at 11:38 set up by a 55-yard pass from Donnell to Messinger on the first play from scrimmage. Now up 41-8, the running clock started.Fostoria answered almost immediately as Jordan Ferguson pulled down a pass from Miller, split the defense and dashed 56 yards for a touchdown at 10:18. FHS seemed to pass for the conversion but was flagged for an illegal forward pass so the score remained 41-14. With the Eagles lead now under 30 points the running clock was lifted.The two teams traded touchdowns again with Maize rushing 8 yards at 7:50 to extend Eastwood's lead to 48-14 and restart the running clock. And the Redmen stopped the running clock again when Lance Miller got a good block up front, spun outside and ran 61 yards up field for a touchdown at 5:14 to cut the lead to 48-20.Oliver's 34-yard kickoff return to the FHS 42 gave the Eagles short field and Maize's 4-yard touchdown run capped a 6-play drive in 1:24, extending the lead to 55-20 and restarting the running clock for good.Eastwood added one final score in the fourth quarter as Kevin Lewis broke free for a 50-yard touchdown run on the first play from scrimmage after the Redmen turned the ball over on downs. Noah Haar kicked the extra point, his ninth of the night, for the 62-20 final."We knew they were going to be hard to stop," Kidwell said. "They're bigger than us, they're stronger than us. This game was won last offseason when those kids were dedicated in the weight room and we had kids sparingly showing up in the weight room."