Hastings Tiger's football captions meet with the refs and other team before going into overtime.
After starting the season off 0-4, the Hastings High football team got their first win on Friday, September 23, against the Lexington Minutemen.
The Tigers remained scoreless going into the fourth quarter, but the team pushed and scored two touchdowns to tie the game, and sent it into overtime.
“During the first three quarters we played defense, it felt like a majority of the time,” head coach Charlie Shoemaker said. “However, we took advantage of the fourth quarter and made it our time.”
With Hastings being one of the only teams that alternate the two starting quarterbacks, Tucker Synek and Chance Vertin, they both had important roles in the first Tiger victory of the season.
“It seems like the team would not get along very well with having two different quarterbacks, and one being left-handed and the other being a righty but each receiver gets an equal amount of practice from the both of them and so when the switch comes during the game they are prepared,” Shoemaker said.
During the fourth quarter, sophomore quarterback Tucker Synek, dropped the snap from junior Landon Devaney, then picked it up and ran it five yards for a touchdown. Then Synek threw a pass to sophomore Kooper Kohl for the tying touchdown in the next series of plays for the Tigers.
“When I dropped the snap I was not freaking out, so I just picked it up and saw an open gap so I ran it in,” Synek said. “If I would not have got that ball then the game would have ended in a totally different way.”
Going into overtime in football means the captains have to meet in the middle of the field for both teams and they flip a coin to see who will get the ball first or not. Hastings captions are Joe Rodriguez, senior, Daeton Espino, senior, Chance Vertin, sophomore, and Tucker Synek, a sophomore.
“My emotions were high cause this is one of the closest games we have been in, and overtime always makes your adrenaline start pumping,” Espino said.
Hastings lost the coin flip and the Tigers got the ball first. Overtime is not timed but you only get four downs starting from the 25-yard line. When the Tigers were second and goal Tucker Synek handed the ball off to running back Naz Robinson, junior, to score first during overtime.
“I knew I was getting the ball and I knew what I had to do with it,” Robinson said.
After that, the Tiger’s defense held the Minutemen to win the game. Keithen Krings, sophomore, batted down the throw from Lexington’s quarterback to end it.
“It was exciting, we were all jumping up and down cheering and it made the bus ride home more fun for us, cause at the end of the day we walked away 1-4, and Lexington was 0-5,” Senior Joe Rodriguez said.
