Despite Setbacks, Red Devils Moving Forward with Resilience
EUREKA – Heading into Week 9 of the 2021 season, the Eureka football team is in a fairly unfamiliar familiar place.
The Red Devils are 2-6 on the season, 2-4 in the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference and coming off three straight tough losses. There's no sugarcoating it: it's been a real grind and a trying stretch for the team. And it's been a while since the Red Devils have gone through it like this.
EC coach Kurt Barth and his staff are using it to stress life lessons beyond football.
"It's certainly not a year that we've been accustomed to, especially over the past four or five, but you know, life is that way," Barth said. "And that's what we're trying to make sure our guys understand. Things aren't always going to go your way in life. You're going to have ups and down, and obviously, you want to avoid the downs as much as you can, but the only way you get through those is to keep moving and climb back up."
The Red Devils will look to continue that climb on Saturday at 1 p.m. when they host Lakeland in NACC action at McKinzie Field.
It will be the teams' first matchup since the maroon and gold came away victorious in a wild, 50-49 shootout on its home turf in 2019. It was Eureka's first win over the Muskies since 1995.
Most of the star players from that game have moved on from the Red Devils' side, but Lakeland still has the same quarterback, one of the key running backs and three receivers who made big plays in that matchup.
Eureka has a good idea of what it will be up against this weekend.
"Lakeland is one of the top teams in the conference and they've been that way for the past six or seven years," Barth said. "We know they're very fast, athletic on both sides of the ball, very well-coached. They still have an opportunity to compete for a conference championship, so we have to give a championship effort – no matter what."
The Muskies enter with a 6-1 record and 4-1 mark in NACC play. The team's only loss was a 54-40 defeat at Benedictine.
Lakeland has a high-powered offense and a solid defense, coming in posting 47.1 points per game while allowing less than 24 per game. The team leads the NACC in yards per game with 518.4.
Running back Larry Rivers, who tallied 98 yards and a touchdown at Eureka two years ago, now leads the league in rushing with 155.3 rushing yards per game and rushing touchdowns with 14.
Quarterback Charl'Tez Nunnery is fourth in the NACC in passing with 249.7 yards per game and is tied for third in passing touchdowns with 21. He threw for 248 yards and two TDs on 50 percent passing with one interception at EC two years ago.
Brice Kensey is the leading receiver with 522 receiving yards and six touchdowns on 45 receptions. Mason Prunick is third in the NACC with eight touchdown receptions. He has tallied 453 receiving yards on 20 catches.
On the other side of the ball, Lakeland boasts three of the top five sack leaders in the NACC. Otis Watts leads the whole league with 10 on the season, while Chris Daniels and D'Jimon Stuckey are fourth and fifth with four and three, respectively.
Shazon Crutcher is the team's top tackler with 58 total tackles, including 39 solo efforts, 2 1/2 sacks, three interceptions and three pass breakups.
Lakeland rolled past Concordia Wisconsin last weekend to retain the rivalry "Cheese Bowl" for the third straight year with a 49-32 win.
Eureka, meanwhile, dropped a 68-41 game on the road at Concordia Wisconsin. The Red Devils amassed a season-high 575 yards of total offense, but the team couldn't get enough stops to stay with the Warriors that night.
The most notable performance of the night, however, came from fullback Ben Bernabei.
Due to a slew of injuries, Bernabei stepped up and became the Red Devils' go-to ball carrier. The result was 161 rushing yards on 27 carries with five touchdowns. He is only the fifth Eureka player in program history to rush for five touchdowns.
Like his teammate Lamont Hill Jr. before him, Bernabei joined an exclusive club that features only Le'Anthony Reasnover, who scored seven on Nov. 4, 2017, six on Sept. 30, 2017, and five on Oct. 28, 2017 and five times during the 2018 season, Eric Leiser (six on Nov. 2, 1991), Ralph McKinzie (five on Oct. 15, 1920) and Hill, who scored five touchdowns in a 58-57 overtime victory over Rockford on Sept. 18.
Barth describes Bernabei as "one of the unheralded guys in the program." Like former all-conference fullback Wesley Burris before him, Bernabei has consistently done his job, being the key blocker for Eureka's stable of quality running backs and catching a few passes along the way.
"Ben had taken that role over and done a fantastic job of leading the way," he said. "He's got the ability to be a single back or a tail back as well. He was an all-state running back/linebacker in high school, so it's not new to him. Ben stepped into that spot and did a great job carrying the ball."
In addition to Bernabei shining in a new role, senior Gabe Newlin had a strong showing moving from tight end to fullback.
"In his first really full game experience at that position, he did very well," Barth said. "You love to see that for a kid that has done things right for four years, never complained, just kept showing up and doing his job, and he got a great opportunity and capitalized on it."
For all of the knocks the Red Devils have taken this season, the team has consistently shown a resilience in its depth of players who have stepped up when someone ahead of them went down.
One of the most obvious examples is sophomore quarterback Lukas Tinkham, who stepped in after junior starting quarterback Nathan Garard went down with a concussion at the end of Week 3. He's had his share of triumphs and growing pains from week to week, but Barth says the progress is evident.
Last week, he threw for a career-high 320 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions on 19-of-35 passing. Of all the throws he made, there were only two or three that he would have taken back.
His offensive line also had a strong night, helping the team notch the season-high of yards without conceding a sack all night. None of it happened by accident.
"That's a credit to our guys," Barth said. "They're working hard and they're doing what's asked of them. That's all any coach can ever ask. Obviously, it's easy to do that when you're winning more than you're losing, but you love to see that when things aren't going as well, that your kids are still doing things that allow them to have success in the first place."