By Dan Truttschel
Correspondent
The fans who paid to see the Jefferson-East Troy football game Friday night certainly got their money’s worth.
But for the fans from East Troy, the chance to see their team come together for the huge-early season victory from their own stands was priceless.
East Troy took the lead for good with two third-quarter touchdowns and held on to defeat the Eagles 42-35 in a thrilling Rock Valley Conference North Division clash.
The win improved the Trojans to 4-0 overall and 3-0 in the RVC. Jefferson, ranked 10th in Division 3 last week, fell to 3-1 overall.
“(Jefferson) is a good team,” East Troy coach Eric Sulik said. “They do what they do on offense and don’t make a lot of mistakes. They’re a well-coached team, pretty physical.
“I would have been disappointed had we lost. But it was a very entertaining game, that’s for sure.”
The game’s key moment came at the end of the first half, when East Troy quarterback Brandon Matz connected on a 26-yard touchdown pass to Nate Dodge.
Matz added the two-point conversion to tie the game at 28-28 heading into the inter-mission.
“That was one of the turning points,” Sulik said. “We had two timeouts and still had 1:15 on the clock. It was huge to go into halftime tied instead of down by seven or eight was big for us.”
East Troy took control early in the third quarter.
Joey Dedick, who rushed for 202 yards on 20 carries, scored on a 68-yard run to give the Trojans the lead for good at 34-28.
Matz added a 27-yard touchdown pass to Cody Zaeske, and then scored the two-point conversion, to build East Troy’s lead to 42-28 with 8:17 left in the period.
Jefferson pulled to within a touchdown with 1:26 left on a 2-yard run by Zeke Emerick, who led all rushers with 257 yards on 25 carries.
But those were the game’s final points, as neither team scored in the fourth quarter.
The game’s early moments had plenty of fireworks, too, as the teams exchanged touchdowns in less than a minute.
Emerick ripped off a 73-yard touchdown run just 16 seconds into the game, but East Troy answered 15 seconds later on a 61-yard run by Matz. The extra point failed to leave East Troy behind by a point at 7-6.
After Jefferson built the lead to nine points at 15-6, Dedick scored on runs of 15 and 3 yards to give East Troy a 20-15 lead at the end of the first quarter.
Jefferson regained the lead on a 16-yard scoring pass, followed by a 1-yard run by Emerick with 1:15 left in the half to give the Eagles a short-lived 28-20 lead.
Sulik said he never sensed any panic from his team when it fell behind.
“With the ebb and flow of the game, our kids never got down,” he said. “They just kept battling. If Jefferson made a play, we answered. It was great to see. It gives me a lot of optimism as we go into the next four weeks here.”
For the game, Matz completed nine of 19 passing at-tempts for 156 yards. He also rushed for 64 yards on eight carries. Matt Miller had three receptions for 47 yards and Zaeske had three catches for 42 yards, while Cody Studt and Zach Zewiske each had one for 31 and 10 yards, respectively.
Defensive leaders for East Troy included Dodge with 12 tackles, followed by Alex Kazmierski with eight and Austin Muszynski, Nick Felske and Zaeske each with seven.
East Troy is in action this Friday night when it travels to McFarland for a 7 p.m. RVC contest. The Spartans fell to 2-2 overall with a 22-0 loss to Evansville-Albany last week.
Sulik said he likes his team’s focus, as the players and coaches got right back to work Sunday in preparation for the next challenge on the schedule.
“They have a couple physical kids up front,” he said. “They’re a good program. It’s going to be a big game for them. They’re celebrating their 50th anniversary of the high school (Friday), so I’m sure it’s a game they want to take.
“Every team is going to give us their best effort, which is good. That will make us that much better. We’re certainly not looking past anybody. I think the kids’ mindset is still where it needs to be.”
