30-point second quarter helps Vero Beach escape early hole in win over Fort Pierce Central

FORT PIERCE — For whatever reason possible, Monday night high school football games can often be difficult getting up for a team heavily favored to win.

Vero Beach found that out quickly, fumbling the game's opening kickoff, trailed by a touchdown 90 seconds in and went the entire first quarter without scoring a point.

Fortunately, Vero kicked into gear in the second quarter scoring 30 points in just over six minutes and behind a trio of rushing touchdowns by senior Octavion Osby began District 12-4S play with a 45-6 win over Fort Pierce Central at Lawnwood Stadium.

The Cobras pounced on a mishandled kickoff with a recovery from Rosean McKnight that led to an 8-yard touchdown pass from Anthony Lamattina to Jemar Paul. Fort Pierce Central also got an interception in the opening quarter from Rupert Blackwood to help keep Vero Beach off the scoreboard but it wouldn't last long.

Scoring off short fields with Jevon Grier recovering a fumble to set up a 26-yard touchdown run by Osby on the first play of the second quarter and a blocked punt by Xavion Griffin setting up Osby to score from a yard out two minutes later was the beginning of the end for Fort Pierce Central.

Coming away with the victory puts Vero Beach at 4-1 on the season and at 1-0 in district play alongside Treasure Coast but work will be need to continue if Vero wants to peak at the right time down the road.

October means spooky season

With the calendar turning to the penultimate month of the high school season, perhaps it shouldn't have been too surprising for Vero Beach to not have it easy against a district rival hungry to show they could hang around.

Storms pushed the game originally scheduled for last Thursday back and with poor weather the past three days, both teams naturally looked sloppy without being able to put work in to prepare as they normally would.

Going down early and initially having trouble with the Cobras' pass rush put Vero Beach in a bind but playmakers rose to the occasion when needed in all phases.

Junior Marc McClinton's sack and forced fumble led to Osby's first touchdown and Griffin came through clean on the blocked punt recovered by Affeon Rivers.

SMU commit Tyler Aronson made an incredible escape of a Cobra pass rush and uncorked a 37-yard touchdown strike to Eddie Torres that made it 23-6 and immediately after recovering a muffed kickoff by Fort Pierce Central, Aronson hit Jonathan Hillsman on a 5-yard touchdown to make it 30-6.

Hillsman came up with the highlight of the night in the third quarter as the talented sophomore running back exploded for an 82-yard touchdown run before Osby scored from 21 yards out in the fourth quarter to cap the scoring.

Vero Beach head coach Lenny Jankowski was flummoxed after the game with the urgency his kids did not show right out of the gates Monday and is hopeful they will learn to try and make the most out of every game they get the rest of 2023.

"You're so limited in your opportunities in this sport and it's hard for me to understand how you can't be excited or ready to play," Jankowski said. "I've been coaching a long a time, I remember my playing days and not everyone has to be like me but there's limited opportunities in this sport so when you get them, I don't care if it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, whenever it is, it's at 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock, whoever you're playing, tonight, anything that could have been sloppy was sloppy. Opening kickoff to snaps to bad reads. Obviously we'll have to look at the film and get things cleaned up going into Friday."

Cobras bite early but can't keep pace

The opening 90 seconds of the game couldn't have gone better for Fort Pierce Central coming off a disappointing 21-0 shutout defeat to Palm Bay in Week 5.

The quick start held up for the opening quarter with the Cobra defense coming to play forcing Vero Beach to punt on its opening possession and before Blackwood's interception, senior Elliott Kernizan sacked Aronson to back Vero up.

Even a successful fake punt with punter Tyler Mondo hitting Paul for a gain of five on fourth-and-four from the Cobra 25-yard line gave Fort Pierce Central but in one play, it all flipped.

Quarterback Jake Whiteley was stripped of the ball on a keeper by McClinton and from there, little went right the rest of the night as the Cobras tried rotating Whiteley and Lamattina at quarterback to generate offense but neither had much success.

Along with having a punt blocked, two punt snaps into the end zone helped Vero Beach put two safeties on the board.

Paul had another strong night as the senior recorded 11 catches on the night for the Cobras.

Quick turnaround for Vero Beach

A road game at Wellington in four days will be a test for how well Vero Beach can respond to a performance that had its flaws.

Poor quarterback-center exchanges happened on a handful of occasions and Aronson threw two interceptions and was sacked five times.

The victory did mark the return of Vero Beach senior defensive end Matthew Bacon, who played with a club on his left hand but brought a needed spark off the edge and had a pair of sacks Friday night.

Vero Beach is also close to getting back standout junior RJ Jones to the lineup that will help both sides of the ball out at wide receiver and in the secondary.

Jankowski is interested to see the level of focus his kids will bring as the team prepares to go out of the Treasure Coast its only time during the regular season down to Wellington Friday.

"You should be excited about a win but we've surely got to get better," Jankowski said. "It's a short turnaround, with a game Friday, we've got to put this behind us, get back after it and go from there."

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Vero Beach overcomes slow start in 45-6 win over Fort Pierce Central