Sports

Sitzmann’s 4TDs leads Le Mars to lopsided win over West

Sitzmann's 4TDs leads Le Mars to lopsided win over West

By halftime, the damage was done by the Le Mars High School football team.
The Bulldogs took a 38-0 lead into the intermission on Thursday night at Elwood Olsen Stadium in Sioux City and rode the lead to an eventual 38-6 win in Class 4A District 1 play over Sioux City West.
“That’s what we wanted to do,” said Le Mars head coach Ken Vigdal. “(West) does some good things so you’re never quite sure what’s going to happen. But they turned the ball over and gave us a short field and we got a couple of scores there. So that was nice, and by the end, we were able to get some other kids some playing time, which is always good to see.”
Le Mars (4-2, 2-0 in 4A District 1) scored three touchdowns in the first quarter and added two in the second.
“We got a big district win last week over Spencer,” Vigdal said. “That was a big win for us. We were able to put this one away, and now, you just try and survive each week.
“You have to win the district games in front of you. There’s nothing that doesn’t matter anymore in district play. I thought we went through a really hard non-district play in (Council Bluffs) Lincoln, MOC-Floyd Valley, Bishop Heelan and Sioux Center.”
The Bulldogs got off to a fast start when senior Tycen Augustine intercepted a West pass to give Le Mars its first possession with the ball inside the Wolverines’ 30-yard line.
The Bulldogs opened the game’s scoring three plays later on a 13-yard pass from senior quarterback Jami Sitzmann to Augustine.
Sitzmann had half of his eight pass completions go for touchdowns. Sitzmann finished 8 of 12 for 109 yards and four TDs.
Three different Le Mars receivers caught scores from Sitzmann.
Senior Tycen Augustine hauled in two while seniors Karter Melvin and Andrew Grant each had one.
“A lot of different people scored, which is always good to see. When you play us, you have to account for Tycen, for Andrew (Grant), for Tegan Bogh, Jami and Joaquin (Hernandez),” said Vigdal.
Grant finished with two catches for a team-high 58 yards while also leading the team in rushing as he went for 78 yards on the ground on five carries with a rushing touchdown, too.
His receiving touchdown went for 36 yards as he was hit in stride down the West sideline.
It was all because of something Sitzmann saw at the line.
“We ran a play where Jami and Andrew have a signal to change the play,” Vigdal said. “We actually had a run play called, but Jami saw something and signaled to Andrew to change to a pass and we got a 30, 40-yard touchdown out of it. Andrew got behind the defense and whenever you have a play like that, it starts with the offensive line giving the quarterback time.
“We were a surprised when (West) came out with a three-man front. When you’re a quarterback and see a three-front, there’s lots of guys in the secondary. So I thought he did a nice job with his reads, taking what the defense gave him and hitting the open guy.”
The second half — especially the fourth quarter, belong to the back-ups for the Bulldogs as the teams mostly exchanged punts until the Wolverines cracked the scoreboard in the fourth.
“That’s the learning curve of of younger, inexperienced guys,” Vigdal said. “We’re not going to leave our starters in a game like that, we like to get our younger kids in there to get them ready. Sure, we would have liked to get the shutout, but a year from now, nobody will remember us giving up six points versus zero. We’d much rather get our younger kids some experience for when we need them down the road. That’s more important to us and we were able to do that.”
Senior Degi Kabongo also hauled in an interception for Le Mars.
West (1-5, 0-2 in 4A-1) scored on fourth-and-goal from the four-yard line on a pass from sophomore quarterback Tavin Irvine to Chris Joseph.
Irvine finished the game with 85 rushing yards on 20 carries and was 7 of 19 passing for 29 yards with a TD and two interceptions.
“I told (Irvine) after the game, he’s a tough kid,” Vigdal said. “He’s a pretty talented kid. He didn’t have real long to sit back there and throw, but he threw a nice ball and stepped up in the pocket and scrambled for some gains. We were going to have to make sure we knew where he was at.”
“They did some different things, but we didn’t want to let him get outside, so our ends were playing him to keep him in the pocket as much as possible. He did a nice job of stepping up, but our linebackers came up and helped out. The thing with a running quarterback like that is, you take a seven, eight-yard drop back, now if you take off running, you need to get at least that just to get back to the line of scrimmage.”
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