MADISON TOWNSHIP — Devon Stroud took Friday night’s football game at Madison into his own capable hands, and especially legs.
Lexington’s senior running back ripped off 166 yards and 2 TDs in the second half, and 216 yards for the game, to help the Minutemen pull away from a scoreless halftime tie for a 14-6 victory over the Rams.
“You won’t find a tougher kid than Devin Stroud,” said Lexington coach Taylor Gerhardt. “He doesn’t know the word quit. He’s quite a leader.”
Stroud broke off a 35-yard run on the first snap of the second half, and after six straight runs plowed into the end zone on a two-yard plunge to give Lexington (2-7, 1-6 in the Ohio Cardinal Conference) a 7-0 lead.
Late in the fourth quarter Stroud got loose on a 26-yard touchdown dash to open an insurmountable 14-0 spread.
“We struggled to stop their off-tackle game,” Madison coach Jami Masi said. “Their two tackles (senior Keslyr Hooper, 6-6, 275 and senior Blake Bowman, 6-1, 265) are really physical. They ran an unbalanced set, which we prepared for, but hit that c-gap over and over and over.
“Their guy (Stroud) ran really hard and those two tackles are just so big, that was the difference in the game.”
Both teams had multiple chances to score, but frittered away those opportunities in a game littered with penalties and turnovers.
Lexington suffered turnovers twice inside the Madison 5 in the first half.
“We saw we could move the ball, but we just kept shooting ourselves in the foot,” Gerhardt said. “We told the kids we’re not going to change anything, just stop killing ourselves.”
Madison (0-9, 0-5) got on the board in the fourth quarter on a hook-and-ladder play. Freshman quarterback Kaden Mullens fired a pass to Mason Campbell, who pitched it to a streaking J.B. Adkins for the 47-yard touchdown. But the Rams suffered back-to-back procedure penalties on the extra point, which came up short.
When Lexington recovered the onside kick, that was the ballgame.
“I thought our kids did a great job,” Gerhardt said, noting junior standout Cade Stover was limited to playing defense. “He is one of the best players in the nation, and he’s a tough son-of-a-gun, too. We have to hold him back. If it was up to him he would be out there on every play.”
Campbell led the Rams with 124 yards rushing.
The Minutemen wrap up their season next week at home against Thomas Worthington. Madison travels to Arlin Field to meet Mansfield Senior.
“I thought we played great defense and created a couple of turnovers,” Masi said. “We just made too many mistakes.”
