It was vintage Manatee High School Football according to head coach Joe Kinnan and some of his players.
By the way they dominated nationally-ranked Gilman High School, 44-14 at the University of Maryland on Sunday evening, it was hard to argue with that assertion.
Junior quarterback Joshua Meyer started the post-Cord Sandberg era very nicely with an extremely efficient 14-of-24 for 124 yards and 3 passing touchdowns performance, along with the help from a bevy of Hurricanes running backs and wide receivers. Meyer also added 64 yards on 11 carries, as well. It was a night that was nearly finished before it got started when he went down with an apparent ankle injury.
“I hurt it last game, but definitely felt like I was able to tough out and I did,” said Meyer.
In his brief absence, senior Broderick Yancy stepped in and led the ‘Canes to their opening TD to Kelvin McKnight. Sophomore Johnnie Lang added 122 yards on 14 carries and a touchdown as well. Manatee’s first punt in the ballgame was not until midway through the fourth quarter, scoring touchdowns on all but the aforementioned series in the second half. The Hurricanes also forced turnovers four turnovers in the process.
“It was a heavyweight, slug at ‘em, punch at ‘em, kind of matchup,” said Kinnan. “In the second half we started getting the movement up front with our big people, our running backs Travon (Walters) and our sophomore Johnnie Lang, who is really tough in the open field. He’s going to be a real good one.”
Although Florida is known for producing blinding speed, Kinnan wanted to show a different side of the visitors from the Sunshine State.
"We’ve got five kids already committed to D-1 schools, we’ve got very good players, but our offensive line up front has a lot of experience. We’ve got four guys that started all last year and another guy that started 2 years at another school that started six games for us, and they’re all 285-290 pounds and are smart, and they just opened it up as the game wore on. We just felt like we we’re going to run right at them, and if they stacked the box, we would dump it to the perimeter and get our speed in the open field one-on-one and let the playmakers make the plays.”
Although it was Meyer’s time to shine, he still had the look of a kid on Christmas morning, but with a cautionary tone for the rest of the teams on the schedule.
“It was awesome; especially playing in this stadium, even though it wasn’t filled up, it was still an absolutely amazing experience, even better that we won. I know some national sites had us losing by 21, so I guess that’s not a very good prediction, but at the end of the day it’s on us to make it happen and being in front of my family and friends and teammates doing that in this atmosphere on the road is just amazing. We’re back and ready to go.”
Manatee (1-0) travels back to Bradenton to host Venice this Friday before hosting Friendship Collegiate Academy from the Washington, D.C. area on Sept. 13.