Team faces Evansville-Albany tonight at home
By Dan Truttschel
Correspondent
For the first time in 2018, the East Troy High School football team is dealing with a bit of adversity.
Now it’s up to the Trojans to put that behind them.
East Troy found itself in a 20-20 tie at McFarland on Friday night, but the Spartans outscored the Trojans, 28-7 in the last two quarters en route to a 48-27 Rock Valley Conference victory.
The loss dropped the Trojans to 3-1, while McFarland improved to 4-0.
“We made too many mistakes in the second half,” East Troy coach Jeff Crandall said. “When you play a good team, you need to limit the mistakes you make.”
McFarland broke the game open with four unanswered touchdown passes from quarterback Derek Schwarting in the second half.
Schwarting, who threw for 382 yards and six touchdowns, connected on scoring plays of 24 yards to Reece Samuel, 51 and 13 yards to Nicholas Hall and 19 yards to Donovan Hudson.
Hall caught eight passes for 193 yards, while Samuel caught six passes for 144.
“They had some speed at wide receiver and had good timing between the quarterback and wide receivers,” Crandall said.
East Troy’s Jake Dessart, who rushed 51 times for 251 yards, scored the Trojans’ final points of the night with a 2-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter.
Dessart now has 995 yards rushing, which ranks him first in the state, according to wissports.net.
The first half was a back-and-forth affair, as both teams exchanged the lead several times.
East Troy’s Dylan Jakscht (13 carries, 59 yards) scored on a 2-yard run to give the Trojans an early 7-0 lead, but McFarland answered with touchdown passes of 45 and 19 yards from Schwarting to Samuel and Xavier Schreiber.
Dessart, who also threw for 91 yards, brought the Trojans back to event with a 3-yard touchdown run, before McFarland regained the lead on a 1-yard run by Jeremiah Price-Johnson.
With eight seconds left in the half, Dessart scored from 9 yards out to pull the Trojans back to even at 20-20.
“It was great to tie the game up before half,” Crandall said.
Crandall added there was plenty to be pleased with in the first two quarters.
“Our players were playing hard and executing well in the first half,” he said.
Back home this week
Next up for the Trojans is a home game tonight against Evansville-Albany at 7 p.m. The game is a “Salute to Service” night, and East Troy will honor former and current military members, police officer and firefighters.
As for Evansville-Albany, it comes into the game at 0-4, but gave Beloit Turner a tough battle last week in a 28-22 loss.
“Evansville is always a physical team,” Crandall said. “They have shown that they can run and pass the ball, and on defense, they play an attacking style that can challenge any offense.”
Coming off a loss, Crandall added it’s important for his team to fix what went wrong last week as they prepare for the next challenge.
After a loss, you need to learn from your mistakes and work to improve,” he said. “Our players will continue to work hard and get better each day.”
