Rhythm shot with 26 penalties for 230 yards, but Kapaun gets best of Southeast
Mistakes and penalties are expected in any first game of the season, but 26 combined flags and 230 shared penalty yards were not anticipated by either the Kapaun or Southeast high school football teams.
The Crusaders attempted to set an early, strong tone for the Thursday night game, but their efforts came to a screeching halt when the very first series resulted in a handful of penalties on both ends.
Kapaun head coach Dan Adelhardt knew that some of the penalties were inevitable, but others were not as justifiable.
“There were crazy penalties,” Adelhardt said after Kapaun’s 26-3 win. “Some of them were self-inflicted, then some ... I don’t even know where they came from.”
Kapaun finished with a total of 14 flags and 130 penalty yards — a majority of which came in the first half. Leading by just three points heading into the second half, Adelhardt knew he had to keep his players focused on the next series. Not dwelling on mistakes.
“That’s life. There’s going to be some bitter apples, but what are you going to do? Not eat the rest of your life? You gotta get over it,” Adelhardt said. “That’s what I tell them in practice. You’re not going to like every call, so what are you going to do? Part of that is just coaching them through it.”
As a senior, Kapaun’s defensive back Scott Valentas, knew how important it was to keep the team’s energy up when the rhythm slowed down.
“When the game’s going slow, you’ve just got to have fun. If you start thinking about everything you did wrong, then it builds up and you can’t move onto the next play,” Valentas said. “If you’re just having fun and you’re just doing what you need to do, then it feels like the time is going by.”
Valentas realizes his position as a leader on the team is crucial to how the rest of the players respond to the mistakes they are making and the penalties they are getting. The senior said finding a “fine line” between encouragement and discipline in those situations is necessary.
“The more you encourage the younger guys, they’re like, ‘OK, I can go out there and do it,’ than when you’re yelling at them and bringing them down,” Valentas said. “You gotta know when to yell at them and when to keep encouraging them.”
Southeast coach Erik Dobbins agrees that focusing on the penalties is not conducive to the team’s success. The Golden Buffalos finished with 12 for 100 yards.
“It is what it is. It’s like trying to control the weather: You can’t predict what the refs will and won’t call,” Dobbins said. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to worry about what we do on offense and defense and special teams.”
Southeast’s Dobbins remains hopeful for the season.
“We started making errors, we started not performing as well as the first half,” he said, “but we’ll correct that this week.”
This story was originally published August 30, 2018 at 11:40 PM with the headline "Rhythm shot with 26 penalties for 230 yards, but Kapaun gets best of Southeast."