High school football: Jones' comeback fuels Indian River's attack in romp over South Jefferson

Sep. 24—PHILADELPHIA — Derek Jones made a triumphant return to the Indian River football on Friday in the team's home opener.

Jones, a junior running back who missed the previous two weeks dealing with an injury, returned by scoring four touchdowns to help propel the Warriors to a 71-6 rout of South Jefferson in the Section 3 Class B North-East Division opener for both teams at Warrior Stadium.

On a crisp and cool night, Jones and fellow junior running back Kane Lynch, who ran for three scores of his own, helped lead a methodical offensive effort by Indian River, which improved to 4-0 on the season, including 1-0 in the division.

"It's wonderful, a big crowd showed up tonight which is really good," said Jones on Indian River's homecoming night. "It felt amazing, I've never been in this atmosphere in my life, so it was really nice."

"It was a good way to start up our home opener," Kane Lynch said. "That's IR offense right there, it's running it down their throat."

Jones, who missed most of last season with a knee injury that required surgery, played for the first time since the team's season opener and was ultra efficient on the night by scoring his four touchdowns on only four carries.

"It was pretty good, coming back after a meniscus tear and missing my sophomore year," Jones said. "It was pretty good tonight."

Jones ran for touchdowns of six, 20 and 13 yards — all the first half — and added a 34-yard scoring rush in the third quarter.

"It feels great, four touchdowns," said Jones, who ran for 81 yards on the night. "We had a good game, we were very physical so I'm going to try and do the same thing next week."

"That's great," Lynch said. "I mean Derek doesn't get as many touches as me and E.J. (Ethan Hattori), but I mean he's just as good. Honestly, he should get the ball more in my opinion, when he does get it he runs his tail off and is really good."

Lynch scored on runs of 35 and two yards to score the Warriors' first two touchdowns of the night and added a 17-yard scoring run in the second quarter. He finished with 101 yards on just seven carries.

"I think we started executing pretty well," Indian River coach Cory Marsell said. "We executed pretty well, we executed fast, the kids were a little bit physical tonight, which is what I like to see."

Indian River scored on its first nine possessions of the game — including all eight in the first half — generating eight touchdowns on just 19 touches, including two catches, to rack up 379 total yards from scrimmage over the first two quarters.

"I think it's the first time we've had our whole team here, as far as injuries and whatever else, so it's a nice win," Marsell said.

Also for the Warriors in the first half, Ethan Hattori ran for a 29-yard score and quarterback Ethan Petrus busted free for a 79-yard scoring run on his only carry of the game to cap the first-half scoring for a 59-0 lead.

"It was different, it was a different feeling," junior defender Nathan Rush said of finally playing at home. "But it felt good to be back at home. We never lost on this turf and we don't really plan on doing that."

Hattori paced his team on the ground by compiling 124 yards, 122 of which came in the first half, on only seven carries.

"We have four very good running backs who we really use well, so it's pretty good," Jones said.

"They all bring something a little different," Marsell said of his team's running backs. " (Jones) was banged up from the Beekmantown game and he didn't get a ton of carries in that game, but he kind of emerged as somebody that we knew we could count on."

Jones completed his impressive night by breaking free for his 34-yard touchdown run on the initial play of Indian River's first drive of the second half to lead 65-0.

"It's all about the line, they made some pretty good holes for me and I just used what I could get," Jones said.

"Derek is a physical runner, he does a nice job, he fits into our system really well," Marsell said. "He's got some deceptive speed, so it's exciting having Derek back, I love the complement he gives to our other backs."

Jones, who ran for two touchdowns in the team's 30-15 season-opening win against Beekmantown on Sept. 3, sat out the last two games because of precautionary measure for his knee.

"It was the same knee, I just had to get it scoped because they wanted to see if it was healthy enough to play with and it was, fortunately," Jones said.

Also, in all, 10 different players carried the ball for Indian River on the night.

South Jefferson (1-2, 0-1) averted the shutout when quarterback Cobin O'Brien scored on a 28-yard touchdown run with 4:50 remaining in the third quarter. O'Brien completed seven of 16 passes for 98 yards to lead the Spartans.

Indian River's defense has now yielded only 26 points in its past three games, including six in each of its last two outings.

"The defense did a great job getting off the ball, we were physical, offensively I thought we did some really good things," Marsell said. "We're still not clean, one thing I liked is we protected the football I'm going to say the whole game."

This season Indian River is competing in Class B for the first time in Section 3 since before it moved to the section from Section 10 in 2009.

"It's a great win, we were able to get our backups in," Kane said. "But now we just have to get ready for next week (Central Valley Academy), they're another physical team, so we've just got to bring it for them."

Rush added: "We can go some places I know that, we're a talented young team. We're young, we just need to get it together sometimes and I think we can go pretty far."