St. Cloud must win to stay in 7A-6 race

By Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

All that is at stake tonight at 7:30 p.m. is a potential football playoff berth when Liberty travels to Gannarelli Field to play St. Cloud.

The Chargers are 2-4, but they won their two most important games to this point: 7A District 6 victories over Harmony and Gateway. Liberty fell to Class 8A Freedom (5-1), 39-28, last week in a non-district test.

St. Cloud is 0-6 after forfeiting two wins over Gateway and Agape Christian School, but even though the Bulldogs are winless, they still can post a winning district record by beating Liberty, Celebration and Harmony.

A 3-2 district mark might be good enough to send the Bulldogs into the regional playoffs as a runner-up.

Liberty Coach David Benson isn’t downplaying the significance of today’s game. A win boosts the Chargers to 3-0 and guarantees at least a tie for first place in the district with Osceola.

“I told the guys after last week that this probably is the most important game in the school’s history, and that’s the way we needed to practice,” Benson said.

Expect plenty of scoring. The Chargers have tallied 26 points or more in each of their six games. Ironically, they scored 28 points in all four of their losses.

St. Cloud, after the first two games when it scored 21 points combined against Lakeland and Rockledge, have rattled off totals of 41, 45, 36 and 27 against Agape Christian, Gateway, Leesburg and Osceola.

“I’m afraid it’s going to be like watching a tennis match, with all the back and forth,” St. Cloud Coach Chad Ansbaugh said. “It’s going to be a busy night for the scoreboard.”

Benson expects his offense to produce again.

“If you didn’t know the score and just looked at the tape last week, you’d think that we won,” Benson said. “When you have 400 yards of offense, you usually expect to win.”

The game also pits the top two quarterbacks in the county, St. Cloud senior Phillip Steinmetz and Liberty’s Terrell Bonds, only a sophomore. Combined, the two quarterbacks have thrown for more than 2,300 yards, and each has 11 TD throws.

“St. Cloud has that quick strike offense. They aren’t going to have a lot of 70- and 80-yard grind-it-out drives, they are going to hit you with big plays and score that way,” Benson said.

The Chargers offense sputtered early in the game, squandering three opportunities in the red zone.

“That was the difference,” Benson said. “It was one of those momentum changers. If we score 21 points there, or even 14, then we have the lead and all that momentum. Instead, it went the other way. Of course, you have to hand it to Freedom. They aren’t ranked for no reason, they have an explosive team.”

The Chargers’ 240-pound running back Bobby Jones rushed for a career-high 123 yards and scored three touchdowns on runs of 10, 8 and 6 yards, and Bonds threw an 11-yard TD pass to Ameer Thompson.

Liberty twice successfully executed onside kicks late in the game and scored, pulling it within striking distance. A third onside kick barely eluded the Chargers.

“I have to take my hat off to my kids,” Benson said. “They fought and fought to get back in the game, and they came within a finger tip of recovering that third one and getting the ball again.”

Ansbaugh said the Chargers are a talented and dangerous team.

“Coach Benson does a great job of identifying what works for them and taking advantage of that,” Ansbaugh said. “And, they always keep fighting. That might be the most impressive thing about them, the way they keep coming back. They have confidence, and when you have that you never know what can happen. Teenagers with confidence have conquered the world.”

St. Cloud has the advantage of coming off a bye week following its 42-27 loss to Osceola two weeks ago.

“I guess as bye weeks go, this was a good time to have one,” Ansbaugh said. “It gave everyone a chance to get refocused.”

Ansbaugh said the Bulldogs have to contain Jones and not allow the Chargers to dominate the time of possession.

“Against Freedom, in the fourth quarter, you could see that some of (the Freedom) guys looked like they weren’t interested in getting in front of him anymore,” Ansbaugh said.

Benson said he would like to control the ball to keep the Bulldogs offense on the sidelines.

“In an ideal world, I guess that is how it would play out,” Benson said. “But, St. Cloud has had a week off to work on those things, so we’ll have to see what adjustments they’ve made and take it from there.”

Ansbaugh said senior linebacker Carlos Cordero will return to the lineup today.

Benson said the Bulldogs always present a challenge.

“They are a typical St. Cloud team, they always play hard,” Benson said. “The (Eric) Pfeifer kid is a real tough running back, and Steinmetz is who he is, he’s been one of the best quarterbacks around.”