By Noah Dalton
MITCHELL – What has proved to be a rocky season for Mitchell High School thus far continued on Friday, with the Bluejackets falling to 0-3 after losing their second-straight Patoka Lake Athletic Conference game, this time at the hands of West Washington, 35-0.
A winless start to the year is not the worst of it for Mitchell, who learned over the week that their starting quarterback, senior Ethan Turner, who was named to last year’s PLAC all-conference team, will miss the remainder of the season after tearing his meniscus against Springs Valley in week two.
“As far as I know, right now he is out for the season. He has torn a meniscus. It’s a pretty nasty tear, he had surgery today, so our hearts are pretty heavy right now because that’s a really great kid and a great leader, and knowing that he’s laying in a hospital bed tonight just breaks my heart,” said Bluejackets head coach Kevin Kling.
In his place against the Senators Mitchell opted to start freshman Cam Gilstrap under center, though it wound up being Kale England who took the majority of snaps on the evening.
Though the Bluejackets failed to reach the endzone, England was able to generate offense for the team, accounting for a combined 203 yards with 76 on the ground and 127 through the air, completing 16 of 22 pass attempts.
“We knew Kale could quarterback, but we had asked him to move to receiver. So, he had been taking most of his snaps at receiver. He and I had talked about how in an emergency situation, he had to be ready and that emergency happened and we got him ready this week,” said Kling.
“We came out with the freshmen starting out because I wanted to see what he could do and when Kale came in I told him they were gonna split reps in the game and he came in and we started moving the football so that’s how I am I kind of stick with the guy that’s helping us get the ball moved. No offense to our freshmen but I mean when you’re asking a freshman to quarterback a varsity football team with a really good football team across from him, you’re putting a lot on his plate. And that’s that’s not fair to that kid, but I know he’s going to be tough enough to handle it.”
Both he and Gilstrap threw interceptions on the evening, the first of which, thrown by Gilstrap, was returned for a touchdown by Greyson McCoy, putting West Washington on the board with their first points of the game midway through the first quarter.
For the Senators, quarterback Kenton Chase was responsible for three of their five touchdowns, throwing for one and carrying two in. He had 93 passing yards on the night to go along with 82 rushing yards.
Mitchell found themselves in an opportune position to score a few times in the game, reaching the goalline on two occasions but ultimately being left unable to convert.
Though the team has struggled to score since their week one matchup against Edgewood, Mitchell was able to show considerable improvement in stopping the run against the Senators after giving up multiple big rushing plays in each of their first two games, stopping running back Hudson Cress either at or behind the line of scrimmage on eight of his 10 attempts.
“We’ve made some adjustments defensively as far as personnel and basically the biggest thing is just our effort was so much better. We’ve got young guys that are growing up a little bit. I mean, you look at our two inside linebackers one’s a sophomore, one’s a freshman. I mean, we rotated two freshmen at outside linebacker opposite a senior. Our secondary has a freshman, a junior, that’s a first-year starter, and two seniors. So, when you’ve got that kind of youth, it’s going to take some growing up and they started to grow up and I’m proud of them. I’m proud of every one of them,” said Kling.
Next week, Mitchell will take on Eastern Greene (1-2), on the third and final game of their current homestand at Terry Cole Field, where they’ll look to pick up their first win of the season.
In order to do that, Kling said the team will need to work together to lift each other up and find their offensive identity in the wake of their slow start and injury to their starting quarterback, something he feels they did a good job of against the Senators.
“We played with a crap ton of energy. They kept fighting the whole time and didn’t lay down. That’s all we can ask for if you lose your starting quarterback, returning quarterback, a guy that we’ve kind of built our system around. They responded and we started to find some things because we had to find some stuff. We started to find some things. So we’ve got to continue to search. I think we’ll figure out an identity and I think our kids will learn from this and grow,” he said.
“The biggest thing is that we’ve just got to keep fighting for each other. Our locker room has to continue to fight for each other. We can’t be individuals trying to fight our own battles. We have to fight for each other and fight together to overcome adversity because you’re stronger as a whole than you are as individuals.”
