Panthers claim season-opening win
The Mead Panthers showed Friday night why they are the favorites to win the Greater Spokane League football title.
They also showed why they might be vulnerable.
The favorite part was easy to grasp. The Panthers traveled to Post Falls for a season-opening non-league game and walloped the Trojans 35-7, showcasing a returning backfield that hit on all cylinders.
Fullback Paul Senescall rushed for a game-high 116 yards on 11 carries, including a tackle-breaking, 22-yard third-quarter touchdown run that capped Mead’s scoring.
Halfback Skylar Jessen added 103 yards on 11 carries, including three touchdowns. The first score was vintage Jessen, a 39-yard burst up the middle on a well-blocked draw play midway through the second quarter.
Quarterback Andrew DeFelice hit 8 of his 16 passes, barely missed on a couple of other long ones, and scrambled back-and-forth through the Trojans defense on a 21-yard TD run just before the half.
“There were a lot of positives,” Mead coach Sean Carty said of the Panthers’ first season-opening win since 2001. “But like any first game, there were a lot of mistakes. We won making a lot of mistakes, but we just could have easily lost making that many mistakes.”
And therein lies the Panthers’ vulnerabilities.
Mead fumbled four times and lost three. Each of the seniors in the starting backfield had a turnover – fumbles by Jessen and Senescall and an interception by DeFelice. The Panthers also committed 11 penalties, including four major ones, for 110 yards.
“Some guys fumbled tonight who usually don’t,” Carty said, acknowledging Mead struggled to hold on to the ball last year and it hurt its won-loss record. “We’ll go back, do our drills and address it. You can’t not address it. But remember, these guys (the Trojans) like to hit and they did tonight.”
So did Mead’s O-line, led by senior tackle Royce Bond. The big guys up front powered a Panther rushing attack that netted 321 yards on 39 carries.
“We read the paper and saw that we were the ‘weak’ point,” Bond said, “and we wanted to show that was crud. We’ve worked hard to get where we are and we wanted to come out tonight and prove something.”
They proved they could open holes and, when on defense, close them as well.
The Trojans lost most of their offensive firepower from last year’s 8-2 team, but it might not have mattered as Mead sniffed out Post Falls’ misdirection plays well enough to hold the Trojans to 113 yards rushing and 128 total.
Starting running back Dan Hamilton had 48 yards and reserve Jon Aune added 50 more. But two PF quarterbacks combined to hit just 3 of 15 passes and the Trojans lost three fumbles – including two in punt formation – as well.
Hamilton did supply the home crowd some thrills, averaging 29.2 yards on five kickoff returns, including a 45-yarder that turned into 60 thanks to a personal foul.
But the Trojans didn’t score after that – their lone TD was on a 30-yard fumble return by safety Troy Clark – because the Mead defense did what it did all night: not give an inch. Just like favorites are supposed to do.