COLLINSVILLE – If a weather delay and overnight game suspension affected Edwardsville’s football team any, it wasn’t visible Saturday morning.
The Tigers, who held a 21-0 lead over Collinsville when their Southwestern Conference opener was suspended by lightning from impending storms late in the first quarter Friday night, didn’t miss a beat when play resumed. The Tigers wound up getting two short touchdown runs from Dionte Rodgers Friday night and then two Brenden Dickmann-to-Reginald Wilson touchdown passes on Saturday morning to defeat the Kahoks 49-0 at Kahok Stadium.
The win put the Tigers at 3-0 overall, 1-0 in the SWC with a home game against O’Fallon next on the schedule at 7 p.m. Friday.
“They came out, executed and gave a great effort,” said Tiger coach Matt Martin about his team once play resumed, but being forced to wait out an overnight suspension of play can be difficult. “It affects your process,” Martin said. “Usually, we’re watching films and lifting weights (on Saturday mornings). As far as getting up, it’s what we always do on Saturdays; we just don’t usually get out and play a game – we’re usually evaluating Friday night’s game.
“The hardest part is next week’s process for O’Fallon.”
There were some good things out of Saturday’s resumption. “We threw the ball pretty decent, we ran the ball pretty well,” Martin said.
Wilson had two catches for 44 yards and two touchdowns; the scores came on tosses of six and 38 yards from Dickmann, who finished the game 8-of-11 for 123 yards. Rodgers led the rushing attack with 10 carries for 159 yards and his two touchdowns. Chris McCartney had eight carries for 31 yards and a touchdown for the Tigers; Cyruss Ahart had two carries for 15 yards and a touchdown for EHS and Kendall Abdur-Rahman, who came in at quarterback in the second half, called his number three times for 38 yards, including a 13-yard touchdown with 2:05 left in the game to finish off the scoring.
Ahart and Blake Neville each intercepted passes for Edwardsville on the game.
While Martin is happy with the Tigers’ start, he realizes there’s still much to do and improve on with two-thirds of the season still to go. “I’ve always said Week 3 in the conference is just as important as Week 9; you’ve got to get conference wins if you want to be a champion,” Martin said. “It takes a lot of maturity; you know everybody’s going to give you their best game, and you’ve got to show up and be ready to play every game, because you’re going to get everyone’s best.”
