The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAITSBURG - In an impressive hometown sea­son opener, the Waitsburg-Prescott Mustangs last Wednesday took Liberty Christian to the wood shed for a punishing 20-0 victory that bodes well for the rest of the middle school football season.

"I was proud of the kids," head coach Jim Leid said. "They did well." In the opening minutes, with the Patriots in posses­sion, Luke Alexenko brought down a Patriot running back for a loss of two yards. His tackle was followed by two more tackles from Alex Breland and Devin Acevedo, forcing Liberty Christian to punt from their own 22-yard line. On their first possession, the Mustangs drove down the field for several short carries and recovered their own fum­ble. On the next play, Daniel Stansfell broke through the Patriot defense for an 68-yard run to the end zone, put­ting WP's first touchdown on the score board. Possessions flip-flopped before Patriots took over on downs at the end of the first quarter. At the start of the second quarter, the Mustangs man­aged to contain a Patriots' offense with Chance Larue zeroing in on the Patriots' running back and bringing him down for a loss of two yards.

Again, the two teams trad­ed possessions with Stansfell sacking the Patriots' quar­terback

and the Mustangs' defense keeping Liberty Christian at bay with Breland catching an interception from a Patriots' pass just before halftime. The Mustangs received the kickoff at the outset of the third quarter, and on first down Stansfell ran for 18 yards to spark the drive that stalled until quarterback Owen Lanning ran the ball to the 25-yard line for a first down. Several more runs and a 13-yard catch by Alexenko brought the ball to the 1-yard line for a first and 10. Lan­ning drove it hard into the end zone for the Mustangs' second touchdown, with three minutes to go in the third quarter. Again the WP defense held the Patriots on their next possession before the end of the third quarter and unleashed another success­ful drive on their home field turf in the fourth quarter with Larue first running for 11, then for 39 yards into the end zone to put the Mustangs ahead 20-0. A missed 1-point conversion kept the score to 20-0. The Mustangs denied the Patriots any more meaning­ful proximity to the end zone on the next possession. After taking over, they drove the ball to Liberty Christian's 3-yard line, where the home team could not convert for another touchdown before the end of the game.

"The Mustangs stood well all game," head coach Jim Leid said. "They (Patriots) had bigger kids than we do." This year, the Mustangs have a substantially larger

of players: 25 com­pared to last year's 15. They include six players from Prescott, which was not rep­resented in the 2009 season. Leid said current eighth-grade players such as Stans­fell,

Larue and Lanning have matured and improved, while Devin Acevedo has gotten in much better shape. Perhaps because more families are represented on the 2010 team, the home opener also drew a larger crowd last Wednesday.

The deeper, more ma­ture bench and bigger home crowd bode well for the season, which Leid predicted will be a winning one. The Mustangs play the Irish at home on Wednesday.