Trojans Use Defense and Running Game for Win on Senior Night

Home teams tend to play well on Senior Night in high school football games across the U.S. But after Lely’s Senior Night ceremony lasted over an hour, delaying the opening kickoff by 10 minutes, the Trojans started their Thursday, October 27, game against arch rival Golden Gate uncharacteristically flat.

But as the hard-hitting game wore on, the senior laden Trojans dug deep, intercepting three passes and riding backs Guerschom Guerrier and Jakeem Tanelus for a combined 275 yards rushing. A defensive stop with 31 seconds left preserved a 19-16 victory in a game that saw five lead changes. 

As the final seconds ticked off the clock, the elated Trojans grabbed a cooler and doused their head coach with Gatorade, inadvertently cutting his face in the process.

“The Gatorade,” said JJ Everage, Lely’s head coach, wiping blood from his face, next to his right eye. "They went a little too far with the cooler,” he laughed. "But I’ll take it.”

Everage said he thinks his players got distracted with everything that was happening leading up to kickoff.

“With all the distractions we had,” Everage said, "we had Senior Night. We had the film production here with Dominic Fike, who, I mean, is not a distraction at all, but there was a lot going on. Senior Night was running late. It’s hard to get mentally focused. We came really flat. It’s hard. You can’t just turn that switch on. You have to be mentally focused.”

Fike, 26, the popular singer, songwriter, musician, and actor who grew up in Naples, was at Trojan Stadium filming a video during the game.

While Lely came out flat, Golden Gate came out firing and took a 6-0 lead when they scored with 8:27 left in the second quarter. Lely pulled ahead 7-6 on a Tanelus touchdown run with 2:38 left in the first half. Golden Gate wrested the lead back, 9-7, with 54 seconds left in the half when they converted a short field goal.

Lely had three long touchdown runs called back for holding.

"Those first couple of touchdowns that were called back,” Everage said, "they didn’t handle that well. We had to reign them back in. It took us a while to get going offensively. We found a personnel grouping that worked well against them. We had a good defensive plan. We had a good offensive plan. It’s a shame somebody had to lose a game like this."

With six seconds left in the first half Tanelus hit Joshua Philogene with a 14-yard touchdown pass to give Lely a 13-9 halftime lead.

Golden Gate wrested the lead back, 16-13, with 9:37 left in the third quarter when star running back Trayvon Jean scored on a short run up the middle.

Tanelus answered back, scoring Lely’s final touchdown on a nifty run with 7:45 left in the third quarter. The balance of the game was a defensive struggle.

“Our defensive philosophy was bend but don’t break,” Everage said. "It worked to our advantage. The sophomore, Jayce Cora, had two picks tonight. One down here and that huge pick down there,” Everage said, gesturing north, then south.

Cora made a leaping interception in the north end zone with 6:41 left in the third quarter. With 3:12 left in the game Cora picked off Golden Gate and returned it to the Lely 24.

"That was the play of the game,” Everage said of Cora’s second interception.

The defense came through one final time with 31 seconds left in the game when they stopped the Titans on fourth and one at the Golden Gate 43-yard line. A couple of earlier fourth down calls went Golden Gate’s way.

 "I thought we got a couple of bad calls on a couple of fourth down spots on defense,” Everage said, "but we got the one that counted."

Everage was happy with the performance of his 5’4”, 113-pound quarterback Tanelus, who rushed for 140 yards and two touchdowns and passed for another touchdown. On the game’s final drive, Tanelus had to leave the game several times.

“He takes a beating,” Everage said of Tanelus. "He’s a small kid with the heart of a lion. He fell on the ball one time. Took some shots. He’s so fast. He was feeling it. At the end there he was like, ‘Give me the ball. Let’s put an end to this.”

Guerrier played his typical hard-nosed game at running back and defensive end. The 6’1”, 210-pound powerhouse rushed for 135 yards. Defensively he had 14 tackles.

"Guerschom is a three-year starter,” Everage said. "The kid’s just a workhorse. He’s always been a downhill runner. He’s not looking to make you miss. He wants to punish you. You could see sparks of what kind of greatness he had as a freshman. He just was different. He was a man among boys, and he still is. Guerschom is just a football player. The other compliment I can give to him is that in the past we haven’t always had a great offensive line. Whatever numbers he’s gotten, he’s gotten the hard way. But he’s never complained. He just puts his head down and goes to work. He has a great complement with Jakeem back there. You can’t focus on one guy."

Lely (4-4) is in the middle of a treacherous stretch where they’ll play three games in nine days. They hosted Bonita Springs (2-5) on Monday, October 31, then travel to Immokalee (4-4) on Friday, November 4. The schedule shuffling is a result of Hurricane Ian.

"Everything moves back a day, really,” Everage said. "Our plan is to come back Friday, get ‘em focused for Bonita Monday night. Go easy on ‘em as far as practice. We’re not trying to bang ‘em up. We already had our scout stuff done from when the game was canceled because of the hurricane. We know what we plan on doing. It’s just a matter of our kids celebrating tonight, then re-focusing for Monday. They’re just kids. We never know what we’re going to get from them. But we’re going to approach it like we always do. Friday will be like our Monday practice. Saturday will be our Tuesday practice. Sunday will be our Wednesday practice. Then we play on Monday. Then it will basically be a repeat of the same thing for Immokalee on Friday."

With back-to-back wins over Barron Collier and Golden Gate, Everage sees Lely’s playoff hopes on the rise.

“As it turns out,” Everage said, "our win over Barron last week helped us, we moved up from 14 to nine. Low and behold, who was number eight? Golden Gate. This win should help us leapfrog them, at least into the number eight spot. Who knows, with a couple more wins to finish the season we could move on up a little bit higher. It’s all points based: how many wins you have, how many wins they have, how many wins their opponents have. And they say strength of schedule. I don’t know. All I do is I keep track of whether we’re moving up or not and if somebody is catching up, that type of thing."

Everage is happy with how his team is coming together. He said the win over Golden Gate is a big one.

“Our kids are starting to click at the right time,” Everage said. "It was a huge win. They are absolutely our biggest rival. It’s always a great game. My first year here, they were my first loss. We were 5-0, had a very talented team. We went over there and got beat 6-0. The kids all know each other. They grew up together. It’s good for the game. It’s good for Collier County."