Lely Loses Heartbreaker to Riverdale in Opener

No one took Lely’s heartbreaking 25-22 season opening loss to Riverdale Friday night at Trojan Stadium any harder than head coach J. J. Everage.

“It was a great football game,” Everage said after the game. “Our kids showed a lot of heart. They were focused. I told them it was my fault, I did a couple things there towards the end that we hadn’t practiced. We blew the formation. And we should have been in a prevent defense at the end of the first half. It was totally my fault on both of those decisions. These kids deserved to win. They’re a great bunch of young men. I told them, ’This one’s on me.' I’m going to live with that the rest of the year.”

The Trojans had taken the lead 14-12 with 58 seconds to go in the first half on a Guerschom Guerrier touchdown run. But Riverdale got the ball back and scored on a long touchdown pass to take an 18-14 lead into halftime.

"I wanted to give our defense one play to see what they might do,” Everage said, "and it cost us.”

Guerrier, who picked up 212 yards rushing and three touchdowns, gave Lely life again late in the game with a long touchdown run to cut the deficit to 25-22. After getting the ball back late in the fourth quarter, the Trojans were unable to pull out the win.

Everage blames his decision to try a formation his team wasn’t well drilled in as the culprit. 

"We were trying to flip the formation from one side to the other,” Everage said. "We had only worked one side."

But there were a lot of positives in the game for the Trojans. Junior quarterback Colin Raymond showed a lot of moxie, picking up yards on the ground when receivers weren’t open, and connecting on several fine throws. At least three of his passes were dropped.

Guerrier, a senior, runs like a bull.

"Guerschom is a definite workhorse,” Everage said, “but I want to give credit to our offensive line. This is the first year since I’ve been here that I’ve had an o-line that wants to play o-line. They take pride in it.”

“I thought we did some things in the passing game. I thought Colin Raymond did a good job throwing the ball. He’s come a long way in a short time. He drove the ball down the field and stayed calm. We’ve got to prove that we can throw the ball or defenses are just going to get in the box and try to stop Guerschom.”

We’ve got some stuff to work on defensively. Hats off to Riverdale. They did some things tonight that we haven’t seen. It’s hard for a young team to adjust to things they haven’t seen. I’m really proud of our guys, they battled to the end. Even when we were down two scores. They continued to battle and gave us a chance at the end. And I blew it."

Lely (0-1) visits Gulf Coast Friday, September 2nd. Gulf Coast’s opening game against South Fort Myers was stopped due to inclement weather with the scored tied, 7-7.