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SYRACUSE – New turf, new coach, new attitude. And it took Wawasee all of three plays to make some kind of first impression Friday night in its football season opener against Lakeland.

Wawasee scored on its first offensive play of the season, then scored again two plays later as the Warriors piled up a 53-34 win.

Hunter Hlutke recovered a fumble on a fourth down play to end a Lakeland drive, and on Wawasee’s first offensive play from scrimmage, Evan Eshbach fired a strike down the middle to LeShawn Morris, who took it to the house over 58 yards. A two-point conversion by Aaron Evans made it 8-0 just 1:58 into the game.

A second Wawasee takeaway, a Zac Linnemeier interception that went the distance but was called back by penalty during the return, still saw Wawasee need just two plays as Keyan Peete took the ball around the end and found plenty of running room for a 60-yard touchdown sprint. With 8:38 left in the first quarter, it was already 15-0.

“It looks simple when you sit in the stands and try to defend what they do, but it’s not really that easy,” stated Wawasee head coach Mike Eshbach on the appearance of 53 points scored versus 34 given up. “It sort of at times looked like a scrum in the middle. I think, should our D-line have played better and our backers filled? Yeah. Some of it, they did some things we didn’t expect, and that happens in week one.

“Conditioning may have been a factor on both sides as we got later in the third and fourth (quarters). That didn’t help. We made some adjustments at halftime and I thought we played a little better in the third quarter than we did in the first half.”

Wawasee would go on to score 22 points in the first quarter and 36 in the first half. An 88-yard kickoff return by Jacob Hand, a three-yard Peete run and a six-yard throw from Eshbach to Dylan Hepler helped the Warriors to the hot start in the first half.

As much as the scoring was happening for Wawasee, Lakeland only found itself down a touchdown after Adam Kreider powered in from 14 yards and added the two-pointer with 7:05 to go in the half. At 29-22, Lakeland looked primed to box with Wawasee. The consequential drive from Wawasee that saw Eshbach hit targets all the way down the field, ending with the Hepler score was a dagger of sorts.

The combo hooked up again to open the scoring in the second half, the breathing room Wawasee needed, when Hepler raced 36 yards on a pitch and catch. Eshbach would find Hand for a 20-yard score and Brayden Johnson added a 35-yard field goal in the milestone showing.

The 53 points was the most Wawasee has scored in a game since Sept. 8, 1973 when Wawasee beat West Noble 53-0 and was the second-highest point total in program history, only a 70-point eruption in the same year against Manchester has been higher.

“There were times it wasn’t very pretty,” coach Eshbach said. “The good thing is you get a victory. The other part of it is you walk off and know you can have a great week of practice because we have a lot of things to fix.”

Wawasee piled up 416 yards of offense, 322 of which came in the air on a 20-for-30 game from Eshbach, who found five different receivers, led by Hand’s nine catches for 122 yards. Peete had five catches for 66 yards and 74 yards on the ground, and Hepler had 53 yards on three catches.

Kreider had two touchdowns while Nolan Issacs, Coby Mitchell and Gage Paulus all had a touchdown for the Lakers.

Will Geer led the defense with 15 total tackles while Dalton Pearish and Raymond Torres each had seven stops.

Wawasee (1-0) will travel to Ligonier to take on another Northeast Corner Conference team in West Noble (1-0), which hammered Central Noble 32-14.

“I know coach (Monte) Mawhorter, he does a good job,” Eshbach said of West Noble, a team Eshbach’s former club, Eastside, played in the NECC. “They have got high expectations and we have to go over there and improve both offensively and defensively. And on third down, we have to get off the field. And that will be a big key for us as we move forward.”