As important as Levi Blouin was to the Lo-Ellen Park Knights boys junior football team offense in their clash last week with the St Charles College Cardinals, teammate Byron Marshall was his match defensively.
Blouin ran for three touchdowns and Marshall picked off a pair of passes at opportune times as the Knights improved to 2-0 with a 28-13 victory over SCC.
Though he's been playing since the age of eight, starting with the Joe MacDonald Youth Football League, Marshall made the move to defense roughly four years ago and, even then, has seen his game evolve in recent years.
"There's not a lot of passing in Joe Mac," suggested Marshall, a 14 year old grade nine defensive back at Lo-Ellen. "But I also played with the Junior Spartans during the summer, so I got used to it then."
"There's a lot more passing with the Spartans."
As for his ability to pickoff the pass attempts of opposing QBs, Marshall acknowledged that it is important to strike when the time is right.
"I try and time it," he said. "If I can get the ball, then I just go for the ball. But if I can't get to the ball, then I try and time it to hit him (the receiver) as he has the ball, or to hit the ball out of his hands."
Given his experience in the secondary, Marshall as also helped guide some of the football newcomers at halfback or cornerback, learning the tricks of the trade, as it were.
"You've got to watch for the run," he noted. "When we're playing man (man to man coverage), especially, they (our defenders) sometimes only watch the receiver. They follow the receiver all the way down the field while they (the opposing offense) are running the ball outside."
Noah Skrobot capped off the Lo-Ellen scoring, hauling in a TD pass from Ben Kawa with Monjed Eddin making good on all four PATs.
Nolan Larche recorded both majors for the Cards while placekicker Josh Rioux went one for two in the convert department.
The St Benedict Bears also remained unbeaten through two games, blasting the Lasalle Lancers 54-22 and setting up a highly anticipated showdown next Thursday evening (October 10th) at 7:30 p.m. at the James Jerome Sports Complex.
The Bears did a great job of spreading the ball around as seven different players crossed the goal line for six (points), a group that included: Sam Julius (twice), Oliver Poupore, Evan Demarchi, Chris Folino, Nathan MacIsaak, Holden Beange and James Alabi.
Domingo Quintana split the uprights six teams for a single point while Deran Cooper (2 X TDs + PAT), Jake Crawford (TD), Lunden Campbell-Runia (2 pt convert) and Mayson Burns-Bygrave answered for the Lancers.
In the final game of the evening, the Lively Hawks evened their record at 1-1 thanks to a 20-0 whitewashing of the Lockerby Vikings.
Bohdi Villeneuve scored twice (runs of 9 and 2 yards), Alex Campbell and QB Kade Campbell connected on a 46 yard pass and run touchdown and Dean Vildis added a pair of converts, with the Lively defense doing the rest.
