It is a bit of a mystery how Holy Family’s running game went from being stuck in the mud during the first half to being stuck in high gear in the second.
What was perfectly clear, however, was Denver Christian’s struggles with the ground game and four lost fumbles opened the door for the Tigers’ 12-0 victory in a Class 2A Metropolitan League game Saturday on the Crusaders’ field.
Holy Family (2-0, 2-0), No. 3 in The Denver Post/9News 2A poll, managed just 20 rushing yards in the first half, but multiyear starters Koehler Anderson and Tim Stockhausen broke open a number of long runs in the last two quarters.
“You go out there and you hit and hit, but nothing’s going for you. Then, when you see a long drive start to happen, you can see the potential this offense has,” Holy Family junior lineman Mike Gutierrez said.
Denver Christian (0-2, 0-2), led defensively by Kurt Katte and Tim Haynes, never got its offense going thanks to the turnovers.
“It’s been a brutal start for us. We had (No. 1) Faith Christian first and now Holy Family second,” Denver Christian coach Mark Swalley said. “I thought we had a good chance to get this game. But we gave them too good of field position with those fumbles.”
Anderson racked up a game-high 109 yards and two touchdowns on 16 carries after gaining 8 yards in the first half. Stockhausen picked up 53 yards on 12 carries, and first-year quarterback Patrick Chappell completed 9-of-18 passes for 123 yards.
“We’ve got a lot of potential on this team if we can just get out of some bad habits,” Anderson said. “We came out flat in the first half, but got it going in the second half. We need to start games like that.”
Holy Family coach Mike Gabriel saw another reason for the poor first-half performance.
“We made a little adjustment, but they really just needed to stop running east and west. Once they finally figured out they were supposed to go the other way, we got some yards,” Gabriel said.
Holy Family’s first score came one play after sophomore Mike Demmon jumped on a Denver Christian fumbled snap. Anderson took the handoff and went up the middle for a 9-yard score.
Demmon recovered another fumble, again on a bad exchange between the center and quarterback. Before that series, Holy Family went up by two scores in the third quarter on a drive that saw three runs of more than 20 yards by Stockhausen and Anderson, who gained more than 1,100 total yards during last season’s title-game run. The third run was a 23-yard burst by Anderson with 9:41 to play in the third quarter.
Denver Christian tried to rally with time winding down, but a failed conversion on fourth-and- 13 with five minutes left ended any hope.
Holy Family 6 0 6 0 – 12
Denver Christian 0 0 0 0 – 0
HF – Anderson 9 run (kick failed). HF – Anderson 23 run (run failed).
